In the 1300s, Ibn Battuta saw the
- Mali Empire in West Africa,
- Mamluk Empire in the north and
- Kilwa in the east.
He saw them in all their glory. Zimbabwe in the south was also enjoying a golden age.
But in the 1400s, three new empires were on the rise to take their place in Africa:
- Songhay Empire,
- Portuguese Empire,
- Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Empire would not take over Egypt till the early 1500s.
The Songhay Empire took over two of Mali’s star cities, Timbuktu and Jenne, in the late 1400s. It took over most of Mali’s trade that went north across the Sahara and south to the gold fields.
Portugal, meanwhile, was working on sailing down the coast of Africa so that it could cut out the Arab middlemen and their high prices for the gold of West Africa and the spices of India.
Sailing round Africa is harder than it looks on a map:
- No one knew how big Africa was or what shape it had.
- The trouble was not so much sailing down the coast, but getting back. It meant sailing against the wind.
But Henry the Navigator thought it could be done. By 1434 his men found out how to sail back from Cape Bojador (Western Sahara). It is not that far from Portugal, but if you could get back from there, you could most likely get back from anywhere. After that, it was just a matter of time before they reached India:
- 1430s Cape Bojador,
- 1440s Senegal (using present-day country names),
- 1450s Cape Verde,
- 1460s Sierra Leone,
- 1470s Ghana, Sao Tome & Principe,
- 1480s Congo, Angola, South Africa,
- 1490s East Africa, India.
That would spell the end of Kilwa in the 1500s: Portuguese shipping took over its trade with Asia.
In the longer run, it would also make West Africa into a backwaters too. European sea trade would prove cheaper and faster than the African desert trade across the Sahara.
Portugal had three main bases in Africa:
- Elmina (Ghana),
- Cape Verde,
- Sao Tome & Principe.
Elmina was a fort built to protect the gold trade. The other two were islands, which were easier to defend. Unlike in the 1800s, Europeans did not have a huge military advantage over Africans.
On Cape Verde, the Portuguese began what would become the tropical plantation system. It was based on African slave labour. It featured the sons of European men and African mothers who did the bidding of their fathers.
Enter Columbus: His brother worked for the Portuguese. Columbus himself was at Elmina. He most likely heard the stories about Malians sailing to a land west across the ocean. Something he would later do, arriving in the Americas.
Unlike in Africa, Europeans did have a huge military advantage in the Americas. And, with the land they took, they set up the plantation system. It drove the Transatlantic slave trade to such huge heights it became a body blow to Africa and led to the racism that still remains.
– Abagond, 2015.
See also:
- Ibn Battuta
- Songhay Empire
- Portuguese Empire
- Popes of the 1400s
- Columbus
- Transatlantic slave trade
- slaveries compared
524
Good post. I would take issue with some of your characterization of the Portuguese in East Africa. The Portuguese actually helped the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia defeat a growing Muslim state in the 1500s, and their presence on the Swahili coast was really a partnership with the elites of certain Swahili city-states against the power of Kilwa, for instance. The Swahili city-states were divided into numerous mini-states or polities. The Portuguese probably had more respect for the Swahili Coast than we realize because they recognized Islam and certain cultural commonalities through the Islamic world.
The Portuguese also established an interesting relationship with the kingdom of Benin and the Kingdom of Kongo. In Kongo, the king and elites converted to Catholicism by the end of the 1400s, and the earliest known church in West Central Africa dates back to around that time. In the kingdom of Benin, the Portuguese recognized a powerful, centralized state and engaged in trade.
The Canary Islands case actually goes back to the 1300s, but yes, by the 1400s, plantation slavery with sugar developed there. The Portuguese also did that in Sao Tome, Cape Verde, and engaged in farming and wine production in their Atlantic Island possessions, such as Madeira.
The Portuguese seemed to have influenced artistic production or styles in parts of West Africa. Look up the amazing ivory salt cellars West African artists made for the Portuguese and European consumers. Some West African artists were quick to produce pieces that were in a more European style at the time.
The Portuguese also established a presence in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, trading with the successor states to Great Zimbabwe, like Mutapa.
The trans-Saharan trade continued to thrive, but I think you are right, in the long run, it did decline. West Africans living closer to the coasts were not as dependent on trans-Saharan trade for access to goods from Europe, North Africa, or the Mediterranean.
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“He probably heard the stories about Malians sailing to a land west across the ocean.”
There’s still no proof of this. Mansa Musa said it in Cairo and al-Umari wrote it down, and then some griots have a story about a Mali king who disappeared in the Atlantic. But there’s no solid proof of Mansa Musa’s predecessor organizing an expedition across the Atlantic. It may have been something Mansa Musa said in Cairo to impress folks.
Now, if you read al-Umari’s account, it would appear that there were two expeditions across the ‘Western Sea,’ and the last of the Malian expedition disappeared after being struck in some sort of stream or current that led them to their demise. Some made it back to West Africa and told their story, which may be how oral traditions remember it.
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This post is Eurocentric because it leaves out the more important interactions between Africa and the East. “In 1489 an African trader at the service of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate took over the island of Janjira and established his rule. In the century that followed the rulers put themselves under the overlordship of the Sultanate of Bijapur. During the seventeenth and eighteenth century Janjira successfully resisted the repeated attacks of the Maratha Empire.
The ruler of Janjira State was officially recognized as Nawab by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1676, even though the rulers of Janjira had used the title earlier.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janjira_State.
The fact that this African trader was able to take over tells me that he knew the place from long standing contacts with it and its people. Apparently, it wasn’t only Europeans roaming the earth at that time. It would be nice to know how extensive the Africa, Asia contact was.
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Has anybody looked for proof? We know from the story of Janjira that Africans traveled to India. Dar es Salaam Tanzania, is 2892 miles or 2513 nautical miles from Mumbai India, I don’t think it’s impossible for Africans on the west coast of Africa to have traveled the shorter distance of 2385 miles or 2073 nautical miles from say, Dakar, Senegal to Salvador, Brazil. The miles indicated are used for illustration purposes alone, since they indicate the distances an airplane would fly to get from one location to the next.
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@ talibmensah @ gro jo
I tried to cover 100 years in 500 words, so stuff got left out! Like Kongo, the fall of Soba and the visit of Zheng He. All interesting stuff, but, in my view, with less long-term effect than what I left in, the effects of which were profound and still affect us.
As to Janjira State and the Portuguese helping Abyssinia, they lay outside the scope of the post: “Africa in the 1400s”.
I will most likely be doing a post on the Swahili coast and evidence for Africans in the Americas before Columbus.
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@ talibmensah
There is no “solid proof” but there is some evidence. In any case, I do not think what I said in the post is untrue, that Columbus “most likely heard the stories about Malians sailing to a land west across the ocean.” The stories were there, whether true or false, and he had both the motive and opportunity to hear them.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
I thought you believed in the Bering Land Bridge theory.
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Abagond wrote:
I appreciate the display of erudition, boiled down to as few words as possible, your reply to my claim of Eurocentrism is: Yeah, it is.
Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, quit pushing against an open door, I demonstrated my “double standards” a long time ago and labeled it as such here for everyone to see. How you concluded that I “root for” something that occurred over 500 years ago is beyond me. I root for things that could happen in the future, praise, regret or condemn something that already took place in the past. The weak thinking behind your comment is probably due to the shock you experienced to learn that Africans were able to travel to foreign lands and establish themselves as rulers over non-Africans. Your incipient racism is showing again.
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Lordy, I knew what you were trying to say, but I wanted to give you a hard time all the same, just for the fun of it. I only reported what occurred, show me where I gave any indication that I “support” the take over in 1489. I only mentioned this bit of history to show that AbuBakri could have carried such expedition to the Americas since African sailors were going to India well before Columbus. In 2011, a 64 year old Pole on a kayak, made the trip from Senegal to Brazil in 3 months. http://www.wired.com/2011/02/epic-kayak-guy/. The only part that I don’t buy in the Mansa Musa story is the abdication of Abu Bakr II to go on such trip. The emperor of China and the queen of Spain left the task to their subordinates, I just don’t see a sitting monarch doing what he did. Maybe he talked of such adventure and scandalized his court to the point where they decided to get rid of him. After he was removed from power, they claimed he had gone on this quest.
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LoM,
Indeed, I thought you believed in the Bering Strait land bridge theory too.
Whose history is that?
I thought Erikson was the first recorded European to have reached North America.
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Lordy, I write a comment showing that a guy in a kayak made it from Senegal to Brazil and all you can comment on is my admission that I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to show you up for the clown you are? Why don’t you try to address the substantive points I made about the possibility of the trip?
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@talibmensah
What makes you say that the Benin salt cellars are “in a European style?” The only thing European about them is the depiction of people (the consumers).
@Lord of Mirkwood
Besides the Icelanders’ sagas or The Voyage of Saint Brendan, what proof do you have that either Eriksson or Brendan “the Navigator” reached America?
Remember what you said, “if you can’t find any evidence, you can’t state that it happened or even that it probably happened.”
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Lordy, You are making sense for a change. As for the claim that Malians crossed the Atlantic, the only thing “theoretical” about it is the fact that nobody really looked for obvious reasons. If you have information that such research was done and nothing found, I’d gladly read it.
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@resw77
I say their in a European-influenced style because some West African salt cellars made for Portuguese and European consumers did not follow local styles of body proportions, eye size, abstracted forms. Their stylistic qualities are more mixed.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/apiv/hd_apiv.htm
The reason I am suspicious of a Malian expedition across the Atlantic is the lack of motive. Why? Everything Mali needed was to the north, east, and south, what would their motives be for trying to go West?
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@abagond
I don’t know, there’s no reason to think Columbus heard the stories about Mali and an Atlantic expedition. It’s possible, but is impossible to validate at this point. Either way, wouldn’t Columbus and other Europeans have heard about traveling across the Atlantic from the Basque??
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@ talibmensah
He probably knew about that too – but notice he did not take the Basque route. Instead he took the African route.
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@abagond
Good point! I didn’t even think about that. He did take a route from Africa.
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The obvious reasons I allude to are the ones that fuel your skepticism.
“Virtually all that is known of Abubakari II is from the scholar Al-Umari during Kankan Musa I’s historic hajj to Mecca. While in Egypt, Musa explained the way that he had inherited the throne after the abdication of the previous ruler. He explained that in 1310, the emperor financed the building of a large amount vessels of men and of supplies to explore the limits of the sea that served as the empire’s western frontier. He left with about 2000 boats. The only information available on its fate came from a single boat whose captain refused to follow the other ships once they reached a “river in the sea” and a whirlpool.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Bakr_II.
Note the mention of a whirlpool, a number of whirlpools were found in that part of the Atlantic, how would the Malians know of such things if they hadn’t tried to navigate these waters? http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/black-holes-of-turbulance-in-the-south-atlantic-ocean-130820.htm. The claim that the Malians had everything they needed to the east, north and south of them makes no sense because it assumes that they were devoid of curiosity. Abu Bakr II was probably inquisitive, after his first expedition failed and given the resources required for the second, the less visionary members of his court must of decided to get rid of him and bring a “saner” ruler to power.
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Columbus, as well as all of his European contemporaries, knew very well that if you sailed west you’d hit land. After all, the purpose of his first voyage to find a new trade route to Asia. He didn’t needed an apocryphal story for an African tribe to tell him that. The difficulty was figuring out the ocean distance from Europe to Asia. His estimate was wrong; which in the end was fortuitous as he discovered a land mass hereto unknown on European or Arabic maps.
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@gro jo
I am not trying to say some in Mali may have not been curious, but economic and political interests were not exactly to the west. I know some of the inland societies of West Africa got salt from coastal peoples, and there is a lot we don’t know about the seacraft or pirogues of West Africa, but it still seems unlikely. Who knows, maybe we’ll find out more in the upcoming decades…
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Here’s your answer Lordy: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqsiTe854Sw)
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The hell with this moderation nonsense.
Lordy, Insinuendo is my one word answer to you.
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@ gro jo
Your comment was moderated because of the YouTube link.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
No, they found artefacts, and there’s no proof such artefacts were “Norse.” There were already people living at that site for thousands of years before any “Norse” supposedly came.
But please do let us know what makes those artefacts at “Anse aux Meadows” so “Norse.”
@talibmensah
“West African salt cellars made for Portuguese and European consumers did not follow local styles of body proportions, eye size, abstracted forms.”
That’s not true at all.
There were many other Benin sculptures of the 16th century that were not very “abstract” and there were many salt cellars made for Portuguese that incorporate “abstract” body proportions.
“The reason I am suspicious of a Malian expedition across the Atlantic is the lack of motive. Why?”
First, I didn’t say anything supportive of any “Malian expedition”? Second, what was the motive for the Portuguese or Spanish to travel to America? They had everything they “needed.”
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@resw77
Okay refer me to studies by art historians or Africanists that prove your point. Of course, in the Kingdom of Benin, there were local ‘styles’ of ‘realism’ that existed. Nobody could deny that. All I’m saying is there are undeniable European influences on some ivories from Sierra Leone and Nigeria, which were imported in Renaissance Europe. My larger point was that there were West African artists producing styles of work in the more abstracted forms like those of Sierra Leone, and those in more ‘European’ styles. Even in some of those from Sierra Leone or Nigeria, one can find motifs that blend Christian and local religious symbolism.
I never implied you supported any Mali expeditions. That was a response to others. And yes, there was no real economic motive because Mali arose specifically because it dominated trade routes that connected the north and south. Why would they have any real economic or political motives to go West?
In the case of Spain and Portugal, obviously they wanted a way to the ‘East’ without going through the Islamic world. Otherwise, the Iberian kingdoms would have remained dependent on trade routes dominated by Muslim states in the Mediterranean and Asia. Mali didn’t have that problem because their elites were at least nominally Muslim and occupied a great position as ‘middleman’ connecting North and West Africa.
What’s your point?
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Abagond, I don’t like you post….Hate it with a passion!!
I thought you would have concentrated on the actual African ethnic groups, not the f’cking Europeans… can we get away from them for a minute
or see them as the sidepieces of west African history in the 1400s that they were and look at history through African or Arab eyes.
in the first half of the 1400s, the Portuguese were 2 bit players, who acted like “side chicks”, doing what and who they had to, to get their money and trade.
They did a lot of kidnapping, hustling, a’s kissing, and underhanded scheming before they were strong enough to build El Mina castle in 1482.
I want to know more about King Kwamena Ansah of Edina, who the Portuguese steam-rolled over and built the castle, even though he told them “no”
“There in January 1482, he (Captain Diogo d’Azambuja) began the construction of the fortress. The local ruler, Kwamena Ansah, was somewhat astonished when the Portuguese proceeded to build their fortress and town near his capital, but his objections were softened by appropriate gifts”
http://ir.nmu.org.ua/bitstream/handle/123456789/140357/3bbc7e639a2489bd047bd89c7c663d6e.pdf?s
I think the Guan/Fante and Akan should be the center piece of this Narrative, they were one of a few main players in this region.
I know, a source is a “source” and it seems we have to rely on European historians, but can you at least name the African names
because as it is, as noted by the reference I brought in, European history glosses over the African ethnic groups who were “central and essential”
I BEG you to change this post around to reflect this.
You got the Europeans dominating (again) for 3/4 of your post, instead of the 1/8th mention they should have received.
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Abagond,
F’ck Prince Henry the Navigator, why are you pushing European history???
Where’s the mention of the African “Prince” that handed the Portuguese their a’s, Abu Zakariya Yahya al-Wattasi, after they captured Ceuta and tried to invade interior of Morocco –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Zakariya_Yahya_al-Wattasi
and the other Berber clans and rulers of Morocco during this era — the Marinid and Wattasid dynasties, both Zenata Berbers
Remember, Spain and Portugal were fighting the Moors to take back Europe
Henry’s “dream” about west Africa got it’s foundation after he participated in an the expedition that captured the city of Ceuta, Morocco
where he proceeded to soak up and learn as much as he could (and hired local cartographers and scientists) — in Ceuta, is where Henry learned about the gold trade between west and north Africa.
there is so much History in Morocco itself during this time period, that the Portuguese don’t even need to be mentioned except as side notes
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@Lord of Mirkwood
If you know what is good for you (which obviously you don’t), you might want to take some seats before addressing Linda out the side of your mouth.
*popcorn in hand*
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Lord of Mirkwood,
F’ck your “Age of Discovery”
go take a seat and spin.. because unless your name is Abagond, which it’s not … that means I’m not talking to YOU..
you’ve already proven that you don’t know or care about black/brown people or Africa..so buzz off
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Leo Africanus
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Abagond,
small list of Ethnic groups that were dominant in 1400s:
1) Solomonic Dynasty,
person worth mentioning: Emperor Beide Mariam (1468-1478) whose reign saw the decline of power due to Muslim invasions.
http://www.ethiopianhistory.com/solomonic_dynasty
the “Solomons” re-emerged later, their most famous son – Haile Selassie
2) after decline of ZimbabweTorwa, Changamire, Mutapa (Shona people)
note: Mutapa starting taking trade away from Kilwa
http://www.blackpast.org/gah/monomutapa-ca-1450-1917-ad
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“Blah, blah, blah, blah.. blah, blah, blah..
If you don’t like what Abagond chooses to write about, then go somewhere else.”
^^^^^^^^
ZZzzz YAWN..
Speaking of going “somewhere else” … Mirky, don’t you have your own blog to MURK “vociferously” along on?
Oh, unless you’ve got racists, THERE too??
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Another interesting post.
Certain commenters are hilarious. Actually, there’s one commenter in the commentary forum who’s totally hilarious. LMAO!!!!
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Lordy wrote: “How about ceasing to hide behind Urban Dictionary-material words, and telling me about the “obvious reasons” to which you alluded earlier?” Alright, tough guy, I got insinuendo not from some Urban Dictionary, but from the 14th earl of Gurney, who thought he was Jesus Christ, then Jack the Ripper, after a traumatic confrontation with the Electric Messiah.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
I didn’t tell you what I think of you (can’t even attempt an insult on topic). I told you what was good for you.
As to my thoughts of you having value, I think this thread (https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/black-people-the-white-liberal-users-guide/) was a prime example of my thoughts of you having value by example. 🙂
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[…] In the 1300s, Ibn Battuta saw theMali Empire in West Africa,Mamluk Empire in the north andKilwa in the east.He saw them in all their glory. Zimbabwe in the south was also enjoying a golden age.But in the 1400s, three new empires were on the rise to take their place in Africa:Songhay Empire,Portuguese Empire,Ottoman Empire.Continue reading […]
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Abagond, what’s your email? I have a request for a track by an black artist that regained popularity from a movie that i wanted to ask you to cover in your many music pieces with the lyrics and video in all. ^_^
I have the file, so i can even attach the .mp3 file to the email message.
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@sharinalr and Linda, cyber high-5’s!!! 😀
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..Informative and interesting post, it would be really cool to hear more from the African (and other’s non-European) perspective as well..
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@Lord of Mirkwood
Linda stated her opinion of how she did not like the post and stayed on topic about providing additional information. As she always does. She was not disruptive until you decided to attack her first and even then she dropped a knowledge bomb on you in which you had not a thing to say to her. Furthermore you did not care about my advice, yet you did follow it because you seem to have not another word to say to Linda even after she tore you a new one verbally.
As to Gro Jo, he has been playing you like a string instrument. That is not disruptive. That is using you.
The thread I linked is only one is a sea of others that showcase you as exactly what I said on that thread. The mere fact that you are still trying to convince people that is false (even though you gave examples) is a sure sign of how much you actually do care what I and everyone else thinks. Besides that it is funny.
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@Mz.Nikita
*returns cyber high 5*
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Oh and please stop trying to drag Talibmensah into your f**kery. We all know how you like to take commenters and set them up before you throw them under the bus. Cough Cough…Uriel.
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@ Sondis
abagond at gmail dot com
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
Linda was not being disruptive or having a temper tantrum like she was three. She said why she did not like the post and showed how it could be made better. That is called constructive criticism. You, on the other hand, was mainly just calling her names, which is not constructive. Better is to say why you agree or disagree with her instead of insulting her or telling her to get lost.
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@ Sharina,
Ditto on cyber high 5 here!
@Linda,
Agree that the post reads more as if it is Portuguese history (ie, the history of the Portuguese in Africa), rather than African history. Maybe another post, precursor to this one, would be informative (ie Africa in the 1400s: Pre-Portuguese contact).
Actually, the title is a bit strange, as if Africa were a country (or some large mass of non-Portuguese territory). It would be like discussing the history of Europe in the 1400s from a Chinese perspective.
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@Sharina: Cyber high five from me as well.
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@ Linda
It was not lost on me that I set out to write about Africa during a certain time period and wound up writing mainly about the Portuguese. But in this case, what the Portuguese were doing in Africa turned out to have a far more profound effect, on both Africa and the world.
That said, this is hardly my first or last word on that time and place.
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Maybe there is no need to revamp the content of this post. We could simply revise the title to be something like
“Africa in the 1400s: the Portuguese”
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What i am learning is while trying to learn about the history of Africa and purchasing books about the subject it can be a tricky thing it can either be too eurocentric or afrocentric so where is the balance in telling these narratives? I notice this “eurocentric vs afrocentric perspectives even from posters on this blog site. Too be honest it very problematic for me.
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@Abagond
Email sent. ^_^
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Narrowing it down to the Portuguese in Africa is a good starting point. Because i have been perusing different reference books that i own and Portugal had a huge presence in the early history of the continent of Africa.
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Jefe: it’s like you read my mind 🙂
I was thinking of suggesting to Abagond to maybe change the title to:
“The Portuguese in Africa 1400s” (I like your title better)
or
“Atlantic Slave Trade: the Very Beginning 1400s”
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Abagond @ But in this case, what the Portuguese were doing in Africa turned out to have a far more profound effect, on both Africa and the world.
Linda says,
that’s true, the Portuguese presence did eventually lead to a shift in the dynamics of world power on a global stage
But– I think it’s important to show what lead up to allowing them to being able to be players in the game– because it didn’t happen in a vacuum.
Many of these African dynasties were going through changes, which gave the Portuguese (and other Europeans) the opportunity to take advantage
the 1400s is a precursor to the Atlantic Slave Trade because it took time for the Europeans to get the ball rolling
the Europeans did not come in with guns blazing– they had a hard time getting in (that’s why I said they were side chicks who had to hustle in order to get a leg in the game) and a lot of help from the local African people in each region
the civil wars and conflicts between different countries/states in Africa, is also what allowed them to break thru in different regions, because power vacuums were created that the Europeans learned how to take advantage of.
so I was looking to see more about the various African empires/clans that rose and fell, thus creating the atmosphere that eventually lead to a foreign takeover or change in trade strategy.
I know you are doing what you can and that the information is limited (at least in English)
I appreciate and Thank you for the time and effort you put into everything.
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Linda says,
Lord of Mirkwood, the title says “Africa in the 1400s”, not “Europe in the 1400s”
I’m not here for you and really don’t care about how you perceive what I say.
You are nothing but urine in the wind that keeps watering the grass, thus turning it yellow and not green — your thoughts and words are NOT inspirational on This blog
so why don’t you shut the f’ck up and go write on your own blog… someone needs to be there since it’s so empty
stop calling my name, I have long ceased talking to you because I don’t like conversing with dimwits who don’t have anything of substance to bring to the table.
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@Mary and Jefe
High 5!
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@talebmenseh
“Okay refer me to studies by art historians or Africanists that prove your point.”
No need. Just look at the actual non-cellar artefacts to prove my point.
” and those in more ‘European’ styles”
That’s your opinion.
“And yes, there was no real economic motive”
That’s your opinion.
“In the case of Spain and Portugal, obviously they wanted a way to the ‘East’ without going through the Islamic world. ”
First, whether or not it was the “Islamic world” is irrelevant. It was about taxation And what makes you think another African trading empire wouldn’t want “a way to the East” to dodge taxes? And what makes you think another African trading empire with vast libraries containing books from all over the world wouldn’t know that the Americas already existed?
@Lord of Mirkwood
And it’s also only theoretically possible that either your Irish mythical figure or any mythical Norse figures made the trip to Americas prior to the 16th century.
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Mary Burrell@ I notice this “eurocentric vs afrocentric perspectives even from posters on this blog site. Too be honest it very problematic for me.
Narrowing it down to the Portuguese in Africa is a good starting point. Because i have been perusing different reference books that i own and Portugal had a huge presence in the early history of the continent of Africa.
Linda says,
Hi Ms. Mary 🙂
I just want to throw this out for you think about for a minute:
when you say that the “Portugal had a huge presence in the early history of the continent of Africa”
whose early history? and why is it important?
it was not the early history for the people of the Continent of Africa –they had countless dynasties, one of which had already conquered Spain and Portugal
(remember, this is the era where the Europeans are climbing out of the dark ages and are learning that taking a bath won’t kill you.)
learning about the Portuguese in Africa is a good starting point for people to learn about European history
because by starting with the Portuguese, we would be learning about the beginning of the Atlantic Slave Trade to Europe, which eventually lead to the Americas
not to say that there isn’t anything worthwhile to learn about the Portuguese in Africa but it tends to lead away from discussing the Most important players in the game — the Africans themselves.
my whole gripe is that, everything we already know is told from the Europeans side, in their voice, about Their experience… we don’t ever get to hear the African voice and side of the story.
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[…] In the 1300s, Ibn Battuta saw theMali Empire in West Africa,Mamluk Empire in the north andKilwa in the east.He saw them in all their glory. Zimbabwe in the south was also enjoying a golden age.But in the 1400s, three new empires were on the rise to take their place in Africa:Songhay Empire,Portuguese Empire,Ottoman Empire. Continue reading […]
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Lord of Mirkwood @ And what makes yours any more inspirational? Crickets…crickets…crickets
Linda says,
I know that you realize that you are not respected here, but like a little dog looking for a friend, you just keep hanging around waiting to be patted on your head.
Here’s some bones for you to lick on, enjoy!
Mz.Nikita @sharinalr and Linda, cyber high-5’s!!!
Mz.Nikita: Informative and interesting post, it would be really cool to hear more from the African (and other’s non-European) perspective as well (seems I inspired someone, wow)
jefe@ Sharina, Ditto on cyber high 5 here!@Linda, Agree that the post reads more as if it is Portuguese history (ie, the history of the Portuguese in Africa), rather than African history. ..It would be like discussing the history of Europe in the 1400s from a Chinese perspective.
resw77@Linda: That’s good information that is rarely taught in American schools.
Michael Barker@ Thanks Abagond for the post and Linda for her added insights. I was unaware of this history.
I must be doing something right since other commenters seem to glean something from what I offer to this blog.
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MzNikita, Jefe, Mary Burrell, Michael Barker, Michael Cooper, resw77, Sharina and everyone else @
I am happy that my humble words can add to the conversation… I appreciate everyone here who comes to learn and share their knowledge
may we all continue to break the chains and pour the Kool-aide down the sink together
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@Linda: Thank you for your response and i will take into consideration your information that you have given me i was enlightened by your post. I agree the “Africans” are the most important players in the game. I agree about everything being told by the Europeans is problematic because when the white man tells the story it dismisses the African and their contributions and i believe the early Africans were intelligent and resourceful people just as they are today. I have been taking your information and that of Abagond and other posters and just doing my own research. For example i think you mentioned Leo Africanus in one of your previous post on yesterday but you used his Islamic name if i’m not mistaken.
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@Linda: I made a mistake about Abu Zakariya Yahya al-Wattasi being Leo Africanus. Two different people.
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Mary Burrell@ For example i think you mentioned Leo Africanus in one of your previous post on yesterday but you used his Islamic name if i’m not mistaken.
Linda says,
no, it wasn’t me
I mentioned Abu Zakariya Yahya al-Wattasi
Leo Afrinanus real name was: Al Hassan Ibn Muhammad Al Wazzan
trust me, I am learning everyday also and always studying.
I have a whole lot of things I would like to bring in (about Africa) but I don’t want to overwhelm the posts — we need the back and forth to keep things interesting and I don’t know if African history is an interesting topic for most people.
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Mary, I answered you but it went to moderation for whatever reason.
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Now i want to go read about the Atlantic Slave Trade.
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@Abagond a post on Leo Africanus and Sundiata would be good.
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African History is very interesting it’s important to me as an African American. It’s just as important as European history which i am also interested in. I even want to learn about Asian History. It is all important.
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Mary
I forgot to say, that when I posed my question:
I meant to answer it by saying:
The only people who would consider this to be their early history, is “us” of the diaspora — the people of the new world (the Americas, Caribbean, Australia, etc)
this is the beginning of our history – without the Portuguese, I wouldn’t be Jamaican and you wouldn’t be American.
our ancestors are the benefactors and losers, whose lives began (or ended) in the “New World” that the Europeans went on to invade and settle.
but we should not study continental African history with that same lens or gaze as we view ourselves because I think that is self-indulgent.
Even though we are “African descendants”, our histories are bisected and our ancestors lives began a different chapter once their feet touched American/Caribbean shores; whereas,
the continental Africans retained their ethnicity, languages, history, culture, etc and got on with their day to day life (of course with MUCH interruption from the Europeans which Africa is trying to Recover from to this day)
notice how Africans are barely mentioned when you learn European history
notice how black Americans had to be given their own chapter when you learn American history – goes from slavery to civil rights, then you rarely get honorable mentions
so, I just think fair is fair when learning about African history
(that’s why I mentioned to Abagond that I was not happy that we were learning from a Eurocentric point of view, again)
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@resw77
I hope you do research and can allude to reputable sources for some of your assertions. Alluding to the non-ivories is irrelevant. I am referring specifically to those exquisite ‘ivories’ that were traded with the Portuguese. Some have undeniable European and Christian features, which is beyond debate. All it shows is how versatile African artists have been, not just doing more abstract art like one could find in precolonial Sierra Leone. You haven’t proven me wrong at all, and you misquoted me. I never said all ‘realism’ in precolonial West African art is somehow ‘European,’ my point is that societies in southern Nigeria and Sierra Leone were versatile and incorporated aspects of Christianity or European features into their work. I am astonished as to why you find that so hard to believe or accept.
I suggest you read Suzanne Preston Blier’s work, which is quite interesting of showing how West African societies perceived the Portuguese and incorporate that into some of their art. You know, without any references to scholarly work, all you’re doing is spouting your ‘opinion.’ Blier’s essay show show European influences appeared in the Sapi ‘Afro-Portuguese’ ivories, for example.
Click to access Art%20Bulletin%20Vol%2075%20No%203%20Blier.pdf
Again, on the Mali empire possibly going across the Atlantic, it remains unlikely and improbable. Why would Mali and the traders of the Sahel/savanna regions of West Africa, care as much about finding lower prices??? They didn’t need to, they weren’t at the end of the Afro-Euroasian trading zone. Societies in the forest and coastal regions around the Gulf of Guinea had more motive to try to cross the Atlantic because by the time goods from North Africa, Europe, or Asia reached them, prices were much higher than they were upon reaching the Sahel.
“First, whether or not it was the “Islamic world” is irrelevant. It was about taxation And what makes you think another African trading empire wouldn’t want “a way to the East” to dodge taxes? And what makes you think another African trading empire with vast libraries containing books from all over the world wouldn’t know that the Americas already existed?”
Islamic world played a role in this, as did the Italian merchants who previously dominated trade in the Mediterranean that connected Europe with the ‘East. What makes you think the Christian kingdoms of Spain and Portugal wanted to remain dependent on Italian merchants and the Islamic societies around them for access to the ‘East’?
The second half of that quoted paragraph from you is Afrocentric hyperbole. Show some sources, otherwise that’s just your imagination. Prove that the Mali Empire had ‘vast libraries’ in the 1300s. The rise of cities like Timbuktu and their ulama is something that develops more int he 1400s and 1500s, when more West Africans began writing their own books in Arabic or local languages instead of importing or copying books from North Africa.
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@talibmensah
“Alluding to the non-ivories is irrelevant. ”
LOL. You made it relevant when you inaccurately claimed the salt cellars “did not follow local styles of body proportions, eye size, abstracted forms.”
“Again, on the Mali empire possibly going across the Atlantic, it remains unlikely and improbable. ”
Your opinion yet again.
“Why would Mali and the traders of the Sahel/savanna regions of West Africa, care as much about finding lower prices”
They traded with the “East” just like many Western Europeans.
“They didn’t need to, they weren’t at the end of the Afro-Euroasian trading zone. ”
I have no clue what that’s supposed to mean.
“Islamic world played a role in this, as did the Italian merchants who previously dominated trade in the Mediterranean that connected Europe with the ‘East. ”
You completely misunderstood my point. The religion had nothing to do with the taxation. Any empire that controlled a major point in a trade route levied taxes on foreigners, as they continue to do today.
“What makes you think the Christian kingdoms of Spain and Portugal wanted to remain dependent on Italian merchants”
I have no idea what prompted this question as it covers a new and irrelevant topic.
“The second half of that quoted paragraph from you is Afrocentric hyperbole. ”
I don’t know what that means.
“Show some sources, otherwise that’s just your imagination.”
No, it’s not my imagination, and I had no idea you didn’t know were not knowledgeable about this subject. Linda posted very good information on https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/08/27/the-libraries-of-timbuktu/. You should also do some research of your own.
“Prove that the Mali Empire had ‘vast libraries’ in the 1300s. The rise of cities like Timbuktu and their ulama is something that develops more int he 1400s and 1500s”
For one, it’s actually common knowledge that many of the “Timbuktu manuscripts” date to the 13th century. Radiocarbon dating has also confirmed this. Again, a little research would do you well.
Let me ask, what’s your purpose here? To use double standards to cast doubt on any African historical accomplishment?
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The evidence for a sustained effort to explore the Atlantic is scant. The evidence that a maverick king named Abu Bakr II did undertake such task is pretty strong. Timbuktu was a learning center since the 12th century, I find it incredible that they would not have had an extensive library after more than a century.
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Its an interesting article even if the flame war is a bit tiresome… cape verde and sao tome and principe sure puts the idea of sea navigation from west africa, i guess its mainstream to logically assume ‘out of africa’ to pacific islands, and at least on commentor posited i guess mestizo ethnicity in south america? But im not convinced about aleuts etc… anyway
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talibmensah @ resw77
Again, on the Mali empire possibly going across the Atlantic, it remains unlikely and improbable. Why would Mali and the traders of the Sahel/savanna regions of West Africa, care as much about finding lower prices??? Societies in the forest and coastal regions around the Gulf of Guinea had more motive to try to cross the Atlantic…”
Linda says,
talibmensah, we had this discussion on another post “the libraries of Timbuktu” (about Mali Empire being interested in traveling the Atlantic, not about taxes or prices)
all I will say is, when you think about Mali back then, you have to think about it as an Empire, not as the country you see now.
Notice that the empire stretches to the Atlantic Ocean, well so did their trade routes and trade agreements with other states/clans
Al-Umari recorded the story of Abubakari II, as told by Mansa Musa.
The Mande griots also support the story of Abubakari II — it’s pretty hard to hide the building of 100s of ships (no matter how small)
in order to invalidate the Griots, then we would have to invalidate every historian from the past that passed on oral information, which is now written as fact and taught as part of western history.
the big question would be, is Mansa Musa lying? and would the Griots support that lie?!
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The Mali Empire was extensive, and remember, many upper class Malians were educated Muslims, who were multilingual. They spoke Tifinagh (Berber), Arabic, and local languages prominent in the west African region.
The Mali Empire continuously extended throughout it’s reign but the one good thing that they did – they tried not to interfere with the local Ethnic clans and their cultures too much and the Empire utilized the locals for whatever skill-sets they had
meaning if the people were farmers, then they supplied the Empire with food. If the people were fishermen/mariners, then they used them as sailors. (This is how the Songhai Empire built their Navy)
The Bidyogo islanders and people of what is now called Guinea-Bissau, were a part of the Mali Empire. They were known for their maritime navigational skills and boat building.
(they were able to defeat the Portuguese back in the 1400s because they had “war canoes” which were faster than the Portuguese ships)
The Malian rulers would have used artisans and builders from the local river or Atlantic Ocean clans to build their ships/canoes.
These ships could have been built along the Geba River (Guinea-Bissau) especially since the Bidyogo people lived mostly on the mainland and sailed back and forth between the Bissagos Islands.
Ships could have been built along the Niger River, which extends to the Atlantic Ocean. The Sorko were fishermen who lived along the Niger River and their hunters were known to build boats that could withstand Hippopotamus attacks.
The Malians could have used the Senegal River, since the they traded with the Wolofs, until Mali took over the Wolof territories; or the Gambia River – both these rivers lead to the Atlantic Ocean.
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@Linda Thank you for this i appreciate this contribution.
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you’re welcome, Mary… I have more that I might just dust off and post
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@Linda
“in order to invalidate the Griots, then we would have to invalidate every historian from the past that passed on oral information, which is now written as fact and taught as part of western history”
Talibmensah and Lord of Mirkwood have a strange double standard when it comes to western history. They trust western historians without archaeological evidence, but distrust African historians and require multiple layers of evidence for justification. And they assume that just because Europeans were generally unaware of of the Americas prior to the 15th century means that non-Europeans were not.
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*And they assume that just because Europeans were generally unaware of the Americas prior to the 15th century means that non-Europeans were also unaware.
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resw77, Please name the “non-Europeans” who were aware of the Americas prior to the 15th century? Mansa Musa’s tale says the Malians never got to the Americas, they tried to but turned back and abandoned the venture after two unsuccessful attempts. Anybody who wants to prove that the Malians landed in the Americas will have to show that later, successful attempts were made. Do you have evidence for such claim? Talibmensah argues that the Malians weren’t motivated to sustain such discovery program, I think he has a point. As far as I know, two unsuccessful attempts were made by Abu Bakr II and the business of discovery was abandoned as not worth the effort.
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Lisa Simpson on gro jo and Lord of Mirkwood:
http://mysimpsonsblogisgreaterthanyours.tumblr.com/post/52277068435
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@abagond. Thank you for creating this topic, which has sparked a lot of engaging discussion.
@ Linda. Thank you for sharing a lot of information on this thread. It has been a great education for me and has inspired me to learn more.
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Not sure the validity, but an interesting read non the less.
http://www.examiner.com/article/evidence-africans-discovered-america-170-years-before-columbus
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bygodsloveandgrace @ you’re welcome
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Grojo @ resw77, Please name the “non-Europeans” who were aware of the Americas prior to the 15th century? Mansa Musa’s tale says the Malians never got to the Americas, they tried to but turned back and abandoned the venture after two unsuccessful attempts. Anybody who wants to prove that the Malians landed in the Americas will have to show that later, successful attempts were made. Do you have evidence for such claim?
Linda says,
Grojo, the hard part about it is, does pro-western academia have an inclination to prove that an African state had indeed accomplished something prior to the Europeans? because they are the ones who are in control of what we learn in schools.
These type of discoveries get side-notes at the bottom of the page in history.
That being said, I certainly can’t say if any African states were interested after Mali, but according the Virgin Island government, someone from Africa was certainly interested before the 1300s.
Article from Virgin Island newspaper:
http://virginislandsdailynews.com/op-ed/rediscovering-st-thomas-1.795534
My adventure with the television crew ended on a spiritual note, but also a sad one. We ended up at Hull Bay documenting the site of the two Negroid males that dated 1250 A.D. There is not even a sign that identified this historical finding. The place now is use as a parking lot. As a people, we should honor this pre-Columbian site with a sign of gratitude and respect.
The 2 skeletons were discovered in Hull Bay, St. Thomas in 1974 and skeletal/soil sampling indicated that they dated back to 1250 AD. (this was done by the Smithsonian)
Also, they found pre-Columbus petroglyph plaques on the rocks at the bottom of a waterfall in Reef Bay Valley, St John’s, with Berber inscriptions that said:
Plunge in to cleanse impurity
This is water for ablution before prayer
Here is a archaeological publication from 1974, discussing the find in Hull Bay.
Click to access Hull_Bay_Skeletons_-_Ubelaker_-_Angel.pdf
To me, it appears the writer is doing the utmost to try to blow this off and wants the skeletons to be either Taino/Carib or is trying to blow it off as tampering of some kind.
because as we all know, it’s just impossible that Africans managed to do anything without European help! (obviously, I’m being sarcastic)
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Great post loved it. Africans were okay before the Europeans came. Cattle were wealth, herbalists actually knew how to treat most illnesses, we had barter trade (not dog eat dog capitalism) and most of all we were free from debt because our societies were ran by respected elders. It was all good until a vampire showed up on our shores wanting slaves.
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@villagewriter: Yes, that’s right African’s were fine before the Europeans came with their death and disease. In fact all indigenous people were fine before the European.
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@Grojo
“Please name the “non-Europeans” who were aware of the Americas prior to the 15th century”
Nice distortion. This is why it’s impossible to have dialogue with your type.
But giving you the benefit of the doubt that you might have misread what I recently said, I made no claim whatsoever that anyone was aware of the Americas prior to the 15th century. Rather, Lord of Mirkwood and his friend talibmensah share a Eurocentric assumption that just because Western Europeans were unaware meant non-Europeans were unaware.
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@Gro jo
And that’s why you join Lord of Mirkwood and his friend in assuming with certainty, yet without any evidence, that Malians had no motivation to float across the Atlantic (as if you could possibly know what motivates anyone else but yourselves).
Either you’re psychics of full of sh!t
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@sharinalr, Linda
If those skeletons were “Caucasoid” types then it would be more than sufficient evidence that whites were in the Caribbean in 1250. Since they’re not “Caucasoid” types, then you are required to provide a lot more evidence for Eurocentrists like gro jo, Lord of Mirkwood and talibmensah
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“may we all continue to break the chains and pour the Kool-aide down the sink together”, @ Linda (and others who truly seek same)-yeS, let’s do this indeed!
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Lord of Mirkwood,
F’ck off and do not speak to me.
and as I told you that yesterday, I don’t speak to dimwits.
If the others choose to talk to you, that is their business but I do have the patience or desire to waste my time with you.
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“resw77 @sharinalr, Linda
If those skeletons were “Caucasoid” types then it would be more than sufficient evidence that whites were in the Caribbean in 1250. Since they’re not “Caucasoid” types, then you are required to provide a lot more evidence for Eurocentrists like gro jo, Lord of Mirkwood and talibmensah”
Linda says,
resw77, you are very much on the spot… your point was just illustrated by that i’diot, Lord of Mirkwood.
They are so invested in protecting white/European “deeds”, that he Failed to realize that it was the Smithsonian themselves who carbon dated the Hull Bay find… so now, everything is a hoax unless they get a phone call from the museum themselves
They can all go kick rocks…
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@Lord of Mirkwood
Here you go making up things again. What did Leif Eriksson write? I’d love to read it.
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@Linda
It’s only a hoax when they’re “Negroid,” but when they’re “Caucasoid” they are legitimate.
That’s why he believes some mythological Leif Eriksson went to America without archaeological evidence, but can’t believe Africans went there with archaeological evidence.
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resw77,
that’s why I make it point to put white bats on ignore when they come here singing “let’s all get along but without white people, black/brown wouldn’t be sh’t!”
by the way, as far as I know,
Grojo is not Eurocentric…I can’t speak for him, but I think he very much believes in the intellectual dominance of black people
I guess he is just skeptical on this because as I said, most western-educated people (Americans, Caribbeans, Europeans) don’t know this information
because white western academia has downplayed anything to do with “out of Africa” before Columbus because it does not fit with their Narrative that “they” (Europeans) did it first
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Lord of Mirkwood @Linda
Oh, look! I just addressed a comment to you! And guess what? I’ll keep talking to you as long as I’m participating on this thread.
Linda says,
Good then we can finally get rid of you because that is against Abagond’s policy a’shole!
white dogs can’t stand being ignored
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@Lord of Mirkwood
Another double standard.
You ask why African voyagers to the Americas “write anything else down about it” but can’t show what Leif Eriksson or his brother wrote about their voyages (and can’t even prove with any archaeological evidence that either went to the Americas).
Getting desperate, eh?
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@Linda
Gro jo might not be a Eurocentric per se, but he definitely makes Eurocentric assumptions, as he’s demonstrated numerous times. Most people do, but he seems to do so quite often.
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@resw77
I just have to laugh at LOM. He wants to claim it a hoax, but where is it proof of a hoax besides he whining? Just how he claims to not be a racist even with proof. Can’t take him serious.
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him*
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Linda, thank you for that interesting bit of information. You are a serious lady whose contributions enrich this blog. Having gone from the sublime, I now must deal with the ridiculous.
Let’s start with our ‘genial’ host, Abagond, first you write a thoroughly Eurocentric post allegedly about Africa in the 1400s where the Africans hardly figure at all! When I pointed that fact out to you, you gave me a song and dance about how ‘important’ the Europeans and their activities would become from that period on. Any grade school child knows that fact, It’s pretty silly of you to now accuse me of the sin you committed.
Now for my favorite clown, its you Lordy, and a strong contender for that title, resw77. Lordy, you started out claiming that Malians couldn’t have “discovered” the Americas, anyway, if they did, a viking and an Irishman beat them to it. You are a chauvinist, I’m not. I based my comments strictly on what Mansa Musa was reported to have said. Resw77 decided to unceremoniously throw me out of the Afrocentrist club to which I never claimed to belong.
Resw77, your reply hinted at knowledge that you don’t possess. You tried to be cute: “And they assume that just because Europeans were generally unaware of the Americas prior to the 15th century means that non-Europeans were also unaware.” Your statement begged the question I asked, if you can’t name the non-Europeans who knew of the Americas, your statement was simply stupid rhetoric bereft of any content. I’m sorry for exposing your ignorance in this matter, I promise not to do it again unless warranted.
I try to hew my comments to the facts. In the Malian debate, the facts, as I know them are as follows:
1- The Malians had the knowledge to make the trip.
2- Two unsuccessful attempts were made to cross the Atlantic.
3- The enterprise was given up after the second failure.
Don’t waste your time attacking my personality, because I don’t give a damn what an ignorant person’s opinion of me is. If you have facts proving that any or all the reasons I enumerated are false, I’ll gladly accept the rebuke.
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@Gro jo
I never threw you out of the Afrocentrist club, whatever that’s supposed to mean, because I never thought you were in one. You’ve exressed a Eurocentric double standard far more than you’ve been fair and objective.
You’ve managed to fool Linda and others, but you don’t fool me.
“Your statement begged the question I asked, if you can’t name the non-Europeans who knew of the Americas, your statement was simply stupid rhetoric bereft of any content.”
Again I never made any claim that non-Europeans knew of the Americas. English must not be your first language or your reading comprehension is lacking.
And you’ve never countered anything I’ve ever said with facts. So better luck next time.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
“Archaeologists have found Norse-style buildings in L’Anse aux Meadows and carbon dated them to the period when Norse exploration was at its apex”
Here you go lying again. I know you read a Wikipedia article and saw an image of some recreated mounds, and thought they were genuine, but in reality, no “Norse” structure was ever found at L’Anse aux Meadows.
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Resw77, you are being disingenuous, if you didn’t know of any non-Europeans who were aware of the Americas prior to Columbus, your statement was just a stupid bluff that I called, sending you scurrying like a rat. I see that you’ve failed to take up the gauntlet I threw. There’s evidence that two attempts were made, both failed. There’s no evidence that the business was pursued after Abu Bakr II disappeared. The Malians were literate and very interested in gold mining, had they made it to the Americas and returned to Mali, they would have chronicled their exploits. I find the griot tales unconvincing because the Malians loved the written word so much that they created a university with 25,000 students. Where are the chronicles of Abu Bkr II? Sorry Lordy, I’m demoting you to clown second class resw77 has pushed you out of top place. “…a Malian crossing of the Atlantic is about as real as Harry Potter.” You imply that they didn’t have the knowledge to undertake such voyage, I’m sorely tempted to put you back in first place in the clown sweepstakes. I’ll hold off on re-crowning you top bozo if you can prove to me that the Malians didn’t have knowledge of navigation or the skills to build seaworthy boats. You’ve got your work cutout for you because I showed that in 2011, a Polish kayaker did it http://www.wired.com/2011/02/epic-kayak-guy/ and that Africans were so used to traveling to India that one of them set up a sultanate called Janjira that lasted from 1489 to 1948, 459 years! One of their most famous member, Yakut Khan, humbled the British in 1689. You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janjira_State. “Yakut Khan was a Siddi Naval Admiral and administrator of Janjira Fort who first served under Bijapur Sultanate and later under the Mughal Empire.[1] His real name was Siddi Qasim Khan but was given the title of Yakut Khan by Emperor Alamgir. During a Muhgal-English conflict he laid siege to the British-held Bombay in 1689.
The Siddis are a community of African ancestry that live in much of Karnataka and Kerala, India.[1] They were loyal to the Mughals and had earned a reputation as excellent sea-farers.” Lordy, I have great faith in you, I’m sure you’ll regain your throne shortly.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
I know you like to create stories to suit your logic, but let us stick to the facts. 2 norse artifacts were found in L’Anse aux Meadows. These artifacts were simply tools for lighting fire. No other evidence is there to suggest they were there.
http://www.livescience.com/37189-new-viking-voyage-discovered.html
On the other hand you have African skeleton remains that suggest that they were actually there. If that equates to Harry potter then I am sure you can present the grave site of professor Snape.
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@gro jo
Again, your little games don’t work on me.
I exposed your Eurocentric assumptions for what they were, and made no claim about whether or not Malians crossed the Atlantic like you wish I did. I’m wise enough to speak about things about which I know, not assume. You should learn to do the same.
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Wow! For a loudmouth ignoramus, you’re suddenly awfully modest, is it because you don’t know what you’re talking about? “…and made no claim about whether or not Malians crossed the Atlantic like you wish I did.” We are in perfect agreement here, you claimed nothing, you tried to bluff on the subject at hand, my question revealed your nakedness and loosened your bile which you spewed copiously. “Either you’re psychics of full of sh!t”(sic). Your vulgarity doesn’t impress me.
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@gro jo
“you claimed nothing”
Right, I didn’t and you did, yet can’t back it up. That’s why you’re asking me the questions.
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Alright, you’ve won, you are the top bozo of this blog. You’re a typical sophist and a waste of time debating. Enjoy your victory.
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@sharinalr
I’m still waiting on Lord of Mirkwood’s explanation as to how those artifacts are “Norse” and why they don’t belong to the people who settled L’Anse aux meadows thousands of years prior to the supposed arrival of the “Norse”.
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@gro jo
I’ve not yet debated you. All I did was identify your easily recognisable double standards and unsubstantiated assumptions.
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@Linda
Thank you for not babysitting LOM with his colonized mind. He wanted me to respect the British monarchy- I’d rather kiss a goat on the mouth; and wanted me to criticize Mugabe whom the British monarch knighted. In Africa we do not have a culture of conquering for glory like the Romans did. The Malians could have made it across the Atlantic they had the knowledge of the stars and the equipment to do it.
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They are out there praising vikings,who to me were a bunch of thieves. Most Europeans claim they are descended from vikings, which is hilarious. They love the thieving, barbaric ways of the vikings and have practiced it all over the world.
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Every human being has the motivation to see what is on the other side of the ocean, That is one of the reasons why my ancestors made it to east Africa from ancient Egypt. That is how some of my ancestors went to west Africa while others crossed into the Middle East. Europeans do not hold a curiosity patent.
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see what happens when you burn all the libraries?
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Does anybody actually know if the Malis did have ships on the atlantic (for coastal trade etc)?
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@Lord of Mirkwood
It wasn’t a fail because your response highlighted my very point. Harry Potter does not exist. Therefore Professor Snape does not exist. The mere fact that you went on talking as if he did only shows to what extent you live in your fantasy. I tell you what does exist….those two African Skeletons carbon dated at 1250 AD. LMAO.
You can’t misrepresent your argument by quoting exactly what you say. You have an excuse for everything.
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@resw77
Here is the problem I see with LOM’s claim. It was believed the Vikings were only in L’Anse aux Meadows of a few years, but no stables for animals, no storage barns, and no burials?
What was found was everyday things that anyone could have done. No carbon dating seems to have been done. Every information on them dances around the idea that they look Norse.
I am more willing to believe that natives used the area as an outpost and traveled to them.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1068950.stm
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@villagewriter
I agree with you.
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@talibmensah
“I say their in a European-influenced style because some West African salt cellars made for Portuguese and European consumers did not follow local styles of body proportions, eye size, abstracted forms. Their stylistic qualities are more mixed.”
I disagree. I think the Portuguese were influenced by the West African salt cellars and I have proof that the Portuguese were wild brutes just like their European counterparts. Europeans copied from the Persians, Egyptians, West Africans but somehow it is always Africans who are always being influenced. Swahili, a Bantu language is always considered as having been influenced by the Portuguese and Arabs; yeah right.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
No. Answers to my questions would satisfy me.
It should be easy for you, considering your viking expertise.
@sharinalr
You hit the nail on the head. But one more thing: Natives have inhabited that same site. So if some Eurocentrist is saying that they know whether that fire starter or butternut belonged to a native or a Norse person, I call bullsh!t.
If they were being fair, then they would cast the same doubt on vikings crossing the Atlantic as they do “Malians.”
@villagewriter
Exactly. Eurocentric assumptions.
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I really don’t care about the Vikings; they are not my ancestors and I have no connection to them(thank heavens). I am more interested in African history that was hidden from us for so many years by a bunch of insecure, thieving folk. Abagond, keep them coming.
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National Geographic called the Nubian Kings the “Black Pharaohs”. I wonder how they define black. I have no respect for that magazine.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
Reading is fundamental. I NEVER said they looked Norse. I stated “Every information on them dances around the idea that they look Norse.” Big difference. If you cared to read your Smithsonian source then even you would know it never said a thing about carbon dating.
Exhibit A: Excavations revealed a number of artifacts that are diagnostic of a Viking site. From 1961 until 1968, the Ingstad excavations uncovered Viking artifacts including a ringed pin, a soapstone spindle whorl, a bone pin, a whetstone, iron boat rivets, worked wood and other objects. There was evidence of iron-smelting and forging, and hearth charcoal is dated to A.D. 1000. The style and construction of the three longhouses and outbuildings are identical to 11th century Iceland and Greenland. The artifacts indicated weaving and iron-working, activities which were not practiced by Native Americans until after A.D. 1500.
Exhibit B: Considering the many contacts described in the sagas, it is strange that so few Norse artifacts have been found in the many Native archeological sites that have been excavated in the Vinland region between Newfoundland and New England.
AS to you second source…..
Exhibit A: Still, some Arctic researchers remained skeptical. Most of the radiocarbon dates obtained by earlier archaeologists had suggested that Tanfield Valley was inhabited long before Vikings arrived in the New World.
Exhibit B: But as Sutherland points out, the complex site shows evidence of several occupations, and one of the radiocarbon dates indicates that the valley was occupied in the 14th century, when Viking settlers were farming along the coast of nearby Greenland. You are aware that 14th century begin at 1301?
This source further fails to carbon date any one of those artifacts. The whole source can be summed up to “they believe it was used by.” Bringing up another site when you can’t even provide adequate proof for the first does not mean that you proved anything. It just means you think more without substance is better. I am sure Leif Eriksson was know for going a lot of places, but that does not mean he actually went. Natives could sailed to them and learned and traded etc. brought it back to their home and the illusion of vikings would still be there. Leif Eriksson could have wrote on tails from natives too. That is a taste of how flimsy the “evidence” is.
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tales*
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@resw77
Exactly. We are to believe vikings were there based on nothing more than iron work and the tales of Eriksoon, but heaven forbid we could possibly apply that same logic to a site that has African skeletons.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
“what possible ethnic connection would I have with the Vikings? Norse raiders pillaged their way through Ireland and sacked Catholic monasteries there.”
What ethnic connection do most Western Europeans have with ancient Greeks, Romans, Minoans, or Phoenicians? Little if any, but that hasn’t stopped you and other Eurocentric historians from using double standards and lies to tell their histories.
“You wanted me to show you a carbon-dating of the sites at L’Anse aux Meadows? Here you go. ”
I don’t think you get it. I don’t doubt the presence of artefacts at that site. What you fail to realise is that native Americans populated that site, and that neither you nor your editable-by-anyone Wikipedia article have explained why these artefacts belong to some mythical viking travelers and not the original inhabitants.
If, for example, the butternut or the fire starter or the other scant primitive items were made from a plant or material that only grew in Scandinavia, then I might say, “Ok how’d this get here from Scandinavia.” And even then, it still wouldn’t mean that mythical viking voyagers brought them there.
We see your double standards for what they are, and we have exhausted the issue.
This is about Africa in the 1400s, not the Norse or the Irish, to which you continuously derail every discussion. Write a post on your little blog about L’Anse aux meadows and maybe talibmensah will read it.
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The Chinese always claimed that their ancestor traveled to East Africa; guess what, our Archaeologists actually found Chinese ceramics and their are families around that region that actually mixed with the Chinese. They took some wild animals and left some presents but never colonized or enslaved the locals. Until they find solid proof that the Vikings actually came to America before Columbus, they need to stop guessing because they do not allow Africans to do the same.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
“You wanted me to show you a carbon-dating of the sites at L’Anse aux Meadows? “—-Not really as it does not change my point, but none the less you have provided so.
First source gives a range of carbon dates. “there is little doubt that these dates come closest to the actual date of occupation.” Sounds like a guessing game to me. As per my quote it still does not change the fact that the “saga” talks about many encounters which seem to hold no weight with the small amount of artifacts found that still carbon date to a large range of time.
The second source states clearly :The results of the L’Anse aux Meadows series have been disputed, not
only because of the possibility of systematic error due to driftwood, but also
because of the selection of certain samples in the calculation (Waterbolk,
1971; Campbell, 1980).
Of a total number of 20 samples from L’Anse aux Meadows, it soon
became clear that not all samples yielded ages representative of the settlement.
Thanks for the carbon dating, but it does not change my point. Which is with so little artifacts in that location and the time they were said to be there. It is not possible to have no stables for animals, no storage barns, and no burials. On top of that the range of the carbon dating for those samples are so wide it is mere speculation or educated guess to say the tales of Erikson hold any more truth or proof than the Mali. Reading the additional source they still fluff those dates with “it is believed” or ” It appears” etc.
“The burden of proof is on you to furnish such evidence. I’ll wait.”—I said they could have. I never said they did, so it is not a requirement for me to provide proof, but considering it is an alternate or counter it still remains that you provide proof it was not that way. So far you have not and trying to switch burden of proof on me is an fallacy dear.
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@ v8driver
Thanks for the link. I will probably be doing a post on him soon.
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@Resw77
I think if LOM is going to continue to lie he should atleast be sure his audience can either not read of ask abagond to delete his post. The mere mention above of black explorers sailing the seas sent him into a psycho rant about how it was the Norse or some Irish dude.
Yet here he claims it was the fault of everyone else for bringing up Mali (which part of the post).
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@abagond np
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@Lord of Mirkwood
Mali Empire happens to be relevant to 1400s Africa, FYI.
But your first comment on this page was not about Mali or Malians, but about Leif Eriksson. And no you’re derailing things yet again to talk about the plight of the Irish or are you blaming that on someone else?
@villagewriter
You’re right about the Chinese in East Africa in the 1400s, and East African artefacts like a coin from Kilwa, was found in Australia.
Eurocentrists don’t even need archaeological evidence to prove Europeans did anything, but we need lots of archaeological evidence to prove the Chinese or Swahili did anything.
@sharinalr
Right, that goes to show that it’s just a historical competition for him. .
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🙂
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mansa musa i read about him
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can’t find my post on mansa musa oh well
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Sundiata was the real Lion King. Mali Empire Sundiata was inspiration for Disney Lion King.
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I renamed the post “Africa in the 1400s: the Portuguese”.
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Abagond wrote: “@ v8driver
Thanks for the link. I will probably be doing a post on him soon.”
I hope this post will incorporate the findings of Gaoussou Diawara’s book: ‘The Saga of Abubakari II…he left with 2000 boats’ as well as comments on African naval prowess and technology at that time. Speculations on the possible points of departures and destinations for these trips, the shortest candidate I came up with is Banjul, Gambia to Recife, Brazil at 1708 nautical miles, and the reason why a literate Malian society did not create a chronicle of the event. I find it strange that Diawara’s book was based on the oral tradition of the griots when I would have expected it to be based on written accounts in Arabic or other written languages the Malians were known to have used. Finally, the use of written as opposed to oral history in the court of the Mali kings.
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I think that their is a tendency to view “civilization” as only occurring if their is a State officially in charge. If their was no viewable State within a history of a region it is therefore presumed “primitive” and not “advanced”. That view is white centric and Afrocentric’s need to be careful not to use that standard when viewing the continent of Africa.
Traditional African societies were horizontally structured, naturally anarchistic, and in some areas lacked what we would call classes. The leadership of elders normally did not extend into the kinds of authoritative structures which characterize what we view as a State. A strong value was placed on traditional and “natural” values. An oral tradition existed where a child of 7 was expected to memorize locale customary law as well as the last nine generations of their family. That’s what a powerful cultural identity looks like.
The first laws the Colonizers passed were those regulating marriage. If you wanted to redefine a culture then regulating the family was an indirect attack. The codification of customary law allowed statutes to be put into place with fees for compliance and fines for those who refused to comply. This Eurocentric justice system was designed to not achieve Justice but rather fund the State and by that I mean white supremacy.
Their is this presumption that the African continent lacked any kind of legal frame work. However if we look at African languages they have more indigenous words describing property, contracts, insurance ect then within the English language. Polycentric justice systems existed in Africa when Lief Eriksson ancestors were still banging sheep.
We tend to view insurance as a modern invention. In Somalia every clan maintains a communal fund that members voluntarily contribute to. This fund operates as a kind of social insurance for every Somali against liability. It can be used both to provide welfare for clan members who fall on hard times and as venture capital for businessmen to borrow and invest. If a person owes restitution that they cannot afford to pay, they must approach their clan to have their liability covered by this insurance fund.
Another aspect of African culture was how patriarchy functioned within society. Within Roman/English law inheritance goes to the wife of the deceased husband. In Africa inheritance went back to the family clan. It had less to do with male superiority and more to do with maintaining the economics of the clan. In a horizontal society clans are made up of families which are act as mini hierarchy’s in the absence of the State. Customary law in part dealt with mitigating disagreements between clans.
Variations of customary law exist on the entire continent of Africa from South Africa to Somalia yet very little is written about it outside of Africa. I see it as a singular thread that runs through the entire continent that defines a common African identity.
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I just now noticed the change. Thanks.
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“I disagree. I think the Portuguese were influenced by the West African salt cellars and I have proof that the Portuguese were wild brutes just like their European counterparts. Europeans copied from the Persians, Egyptians, West Africans but somehow it is always Africans who are always being influenced. Swahili, a Bantu language is always considered as having been influenced by the Portuguese and Arabs; yeah right.”
@villagewriter
Okay, this is strange. What makes you think influences couldn’t travel both ways? Isn’t that what makes history, different peoples shaping each other? Few societies throughout history have lived in a vacuum.
By the end of the 1400s, nearly 10% of the population of Lisbon were African slaves and their descendants. The Iberian peninsula received African influences even earlier through the Moors and North Africa. Portuguese and Spanish cities in the 1400s and 1500s had small but conspicuous communities of African descent, ladinos and slaves. Some of the music, literature, and culture was shaped by these African-descended communities in the Iberian peninsula. There was even a famous Latin scholar, Juan Latino, in Spain in the 1500s! African cultures influenced Europe just as much as Europe influenced them in the last several hundred years.
What makes you think I don’t believe Portugal was influenced by Africa? The real surprise would be if Portugal had never been influenced by African societies or cultures.
And yes, Swahili developed along the East African coast and part of its vocabulary shows Portuguese and Arabic influences. That doesn’t make the Swahili Coast ‘non-African.’ It’s a language that developed in the cosmopolitan Indian Ocean World, which included Persians, Indians, Arabs, and, later, Europeans like the Portuguese.
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A good book on African presence in Renaissance Europe is Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, published by Cambridge University Press. It’s a collection of essays by various scholars on the presence of ‘Black Africans’ in Renaissance Europe. We see African dignitaries, slaves, travelers, Christians, and others shaping Renaissance Europe in art, literature, religion, labor, urban demographics, music and dance, etc. African art was actually desired by some Europeans of means at the time, and there are some amazing portraits by folks like Durer which show ‘Black Africans’ in parts of Europe you wouldn’t think there would be any.
‘Black Africans’ have been in Europe long before 1492, and they have left a mark on Renaissance. Did you know Ethiopian Christians traveled to Rome in the 1400s? That the king of Aragon exchanged letters with the Christian kingdom in Ethiopia, proposing a double marriage for a political alliance? That some prominent European elites had ‘Black’ ancestry?
Africans and Europeans have influenced each other in ways we don’t remember or choose to forget before the trans-Atlantic slave trade took off. I never denied that, I also see some influences from Europe in Africa in the 1400s and 1500s, too, like Christianity in the Kongo kingdom or the development of new trade, markets, alliances, architecture (the ‘sobrado’ style of Angola, for instance).
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/619
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@tablimensah
You need to go back to your initial comment where you made it seem like the Malians copied a design from the Portuguese but you never suggested that the Portuguese did the same. As for Swahili it is a Bantu language with scattered Portuguese and Arab words. I actually speak the language and I know it is mostly Bantu.
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@villagewriter
I never claimed Malians copied anything from Portugal. And yes, I agree with you on Swahili. Anyone with half a brain knows Swahili is a Bantu language. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been influenced by other languages, such as Arabic, Portuguese, or English.
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@talibmensah: Thank you for recommending the book African Presence In Renaissance Europe. It will be my birthday present to myself.
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@tablimensah
I will only agree with you if you can admit that Portuguese, English, Arabic have all been influenced by Swahili. My point is that the language was created by Bantus and they only borrowed some words from other languages. The Arabs and the Portuguese do not own it.
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LOM my point jumped right over your head. Most historians are usually more willing to say that other cultures influenced Africa but not the other way round. Africans are always said to have been influenced by this and that but Greece magically sprouted in Europe and developed democracy from nothing to something. When historians try to claim the Greek culture was influenced by Egypt, they are attacked from Europe to America.
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@ Abagond
I am particularly grateful for your quintych of posts; Marcus Garvey (with the Sankofa symbol), Steve Biko, Timbuktu Libraries, Songhay Empire and Africa in the 1400s: The Portuguese. I find much interconnections with these posts.
As Frantz Fanon wrote in “The Wretched of the Earth “ :“…… colonialism is not simply content to impose upon the present and the future of a dominated country. Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.”
The Sankofa ( in the Marcus Garvey mural) symbol is apt here. The Akan language of Ghana translates it as “reach back and get it” (san – to return; ko – to go; fa – to fetch) to seek and take. It is derived from King Adinkera of the Akan people of West Africa. Sankofa teaches us that we must go back to our roots in order to move forward.
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Mary says: What I am learning is while trying to learn about the history of Africa and purchasing books about the subject it can be a tricky thing it can either be too Eurocentric or Afrocentric so where is the balance in telling these narratives? I notice this “Eurocentric vs. Afrocentric perspectives even from posters on this blog site. Too be honest it very problematic for me.
Mary says:” I agree the “Africans” are the most important players in the game. I agree about everything being told by the Europeans is problematic because when the white man tells the story it dismisses the African and their contributions and I believe the early Africans were intelligent and resourceful people just as they are today. I have been taking your information and that of Abagond and other posters and just doing my own research.”
I totally agree with you.
I had shut down on reading South African and African history and contemporary African affairs. But I was re- nvigorated (because of these posts) to try again. So on Monday I went the largest book store in Cape Town. At the Africa section they had ONLY TWO books written by Black African Writers! And so the university bookstore. I had asked specifically for West African and South African history written by Black African scholars. Thirty six fully stocked shelves of white South African and oversees writers. Only ONE history book written by a Black South African!
I value all the comments by posters who are sincerely interested in African history without wanting to distort it. And not least, Linda, for her encyclopaedic knowledge and her talent for hewing facts with insight.
I am interested in the Benin bronzes; the Dogon peoples; Monomotapa Kingdom; Mapungubwe: South Africa’s lost city of gold; Timbuktu libraries and manuscripts amongst many others. But my smattering of knowledge is not enough to contribute until I have created a synthesis of understanding for myself.
Thank you for contributing to my education.
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gremlin – correction on correction:
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@ taotesan
I don’t think you can find a point of truth between afrocentrism and eurocentrism, because they aren’t exaggerations, but faulty world views.
Eurocentrism is a) the assumption that Europe’s history of the last 500 yers is the only viable way into the future and every society has to be measured against it and b) that Europeans are the only agents of history, that all non-european societies were unchanging until Europeans arrived.
Afroncentrism I understand to be attempts to ascribe technological and cultural “achievments” to pre-colonial African societies without the evidence needed by the standars of scholarship. An attempt to raise the “value” of these societies by the European standard. So, in a way, Afrocentrism is eurocentrist.
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Kartoffel @ An attempt to raise the “value” of these societies by the European standard.
Linda says,
Kartoffel, you hit the nail on the head – but whose standard?
who set the supposed standards globally — white Americans/ Europeans
That’s why the Chinese and Indians in Asia are quick to point out what technology they used/ invented and passed on to the European,
because in the past, historians credited the white/Europeans as “inventing” these technologies ” gunpowder, printing, and the Compass”
until the Asians had to say, “hold up, you did not invent those”
Well, African descendants who started the “Afrocentrist” movement were forced to do the same thing
_________________________
because white western academia and scientist have not and do NOT want to credit Africa with anything…
they don’t credit Africa with any of the ideas or technology that they borrowed or taken directly from the Africans in the past — mathematics, philosophy, astronomy
the Gold that was brought to Spain and Portugal by the Africans/Arabs Moors that kicked started the European markets and helped drag themselves from the dark ages.
Europeans lay claim to Everything, as though it began with them–and refuse or reluctantly acknowledge where they got it from.
and when they turn around and build something else, using the knowledge they gained from others –Africans, Asians, or other Native sources
instead of giving credit where credit is due–the white/European turns around and claims that “we, the white man INVENTED it” – what the f
and this is how it appears in history books, which in turn leads to
African descendants until today, trying to Correct the half-truths and omitted information that was left out of history books
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Michael Jon Barker wrote: “Traditional African societies were horizontally structured, naturally anarchistic, and in some areas lacked what we would call classes. The leadership of elders normally did not extend into the kinds of authoritative structures which characterize what we view as a State…Customary law in part dealt with mitigating disagreements between clans.
Variations of customary law exist on the entire continent of Africa from South Africa to Somalia yet very little is written about it outside of Africa. I see it as a singular thread that runs through the entire continent that defines a common African identity.”
I’ve been intrigued by your claim ever since I read it, where’s your evidence for such it? How do you account for the centralized, hierarchical states that arose all over Africa?
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@ Linda
“who set the supposed standards globally — white Americans/ Europeans”
I think there are two elements to it. First, the Western societies hava a teleological view of history. They judge every society how far on the supposedly inevitable (Western) path of human development they progressed. That interestingly stayed the same for the last 200 years, even though contemporary Western society is very different from what it ws 100 years ago. That is obviously a faulty world view, but still very powerful in the public discourse, less so in academia.
Second, there seem to anthropological universal societal achievments humans are impressed by. For example size. All people seem to esteem societies tht built grand structures.
“Europeans lay claim to Everything, as though it began with them–and refuse or reluctantly acknowledge where they got it from.”
Certainly true if you try to have a discussion about history on the internet. That Abagond had to write his “The white inventor argument”-post is prove of that. Among scholars it is nowadays much less the case.
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Agree with you, Kartoffel
@Villagewriter
Sure, Portuguese has been influenced by other languages.
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Linda @“Europeans lay claim to Everything, as though it began with them–and refuse or reluctantly acknowledge where they got it from.”
Kartoffel@Certainly true if you try to have a discussion about history on the internet. That Abagond had to write his “The white inventor argument”-post is prove of that. Among scholars it is nowadays much less the case.
Linda says,
I agree, very true and herein lies the problem… the general public remains ignorant because getting information from Google is more popular and interesting than the Dry, dusty published works of some Professor of XYZ Institute or University
when I was in school, we didn’t have Internet… so we had to actually Read a book
and do research reading those dry, long-winded and boring dissertations and published works by learned professors and academics.
The information we got back then was Eurocentric.
Enter the age of Internet, and most people want the fast, short, and clear version of any particular topic or to just read the abstract
they do research by reading someone else’s “summarized” version of the same dry, dusty published article, that I had to suffer through and read to its entirety.
and the information still remains Eurocentric
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the problem I have with people online and offline, is that they only want to accept the words or published works of “white” professors — as truth and valid
and they question the words, validity, and credentials of published “black” or non-white professors, such as Professor Cheikh Anta Diop.
Diop was heavily criticized by white western Academia about his take on African history and anthropology, which he felt was written incorrect and arbitrary
because Africa was researched & analyzed from biased and generalized points of view by white academics (example: Egyptians/Nubians, northeast Africans being “Caucasians” and not related to “sub-saharan” Africans)
and when Diop was proven correct by DNA analysis, new findings and studies, these same white academics were reluctant and did not want to acknowledge that they were wrong.
and the misinformation that was previously published, continues to be pushed and supported by the ignorant general public and Internet warriors with Agendas (Nationalists/ Racists, HBDs, and trolls)
because modern scholars are not rushing to publish the “corrections” or make them easy reading (so that people don’t get bored by the scientific jargon)
and as we all know, repeating something “over and over” doesn’t make it true… a lie told 1000 times is still a Lie
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@Gro Jo
“I’ve been intrigued by your claim ever since I read it, where’s your evidence for such it? How do you account for the centralized, hierarchical states that arose all over Africa?”
In my own nation we had chiefs but they did not have absolute power and their positions were hardly hereditary. Elders could override their decisions any time and even remove them from office. That is why until recently talking to an elderly person with disrespect is frowned upon. Elders were important in most African societies and Michael is right.
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@Kiwi
“I guess if it were Africans who colonized all the other continents and enslaved Whites for hundreds of years, most of the developed countries today would be in Africa or wherever Blacks settled in large numbers and countries around the world would be striving to attain honorary Black status. And Europe would have not one developed country, the same way Africa is considered to have no developed countries.”
Exactly. The reason why countries that are populated by mostly whites are developed is because of nepotism. They trade with each other even when they hate each other because to them they belong to a single family. Japan got its economic success from USA; the same happened with South Korea. These Asian countries went ahead and helped develop other Asian countries.
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@villagewriter
“The reason why countries that are populated by mostly whites are developed is because of nepotism. They trade with each other even when they hate each other because to them they belong to a single family. Japan got its economic success from USA; the same happened with South Korea. These Asian countries went ahead and helped develop other Asian countries.”
Interesting insight!
I see truth in it!
But are you aware, villagewriter, that from some circles come the “explanation” that Africa is backwards because African IQ is very low (around 70; compared to 100 for populations of European descent worldwide)?
In another note: some thinkers theorize that in some societies, like the USA for example, Indians (from Asia) are successful because they are able to develop networks between themselves which enable them to assist each other in various societal activities and retain as much money/capital as possible inside their group.
Maybe, Blacks in different societies and also at World level should begin to network between themselves better than they have already done until now!
Food for thought!
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villagewriter, respect for elders is characteristic of all traditional clan based societies. What intrigued me was his claim that these societies were naturally anarchistic and devoid of classes. I find that hard to believe.
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@Linds
*applause*
You said it. Anything written by black scholars is automatically called afrocentric to discredit it.
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@ Linda
“the problem I have with people online and offline, is that they only want to accept the words or published works of “white” professors — as truth and valid”
I would say people tend to believe authors who are part of and published by instituitons who have a reputation of adhering to academic standard. These institiutions are historically white-dominated. Of course this system has its blind-spots and follies, but it is the best we have to come closer to the truth. Just because they have been wrong in the past, you can’t just go around and start believing to people who don’t adhere to the academic standards.
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@Gro jo
I did not say that respect for elders is something unique to Africa. My point is that incidences where there was a ruler with absolute power is rare in African societies. There were no classes in my nation and in other African nations I am familiar with. We had communalism. Land was given by the chief and it could be inherited by offspring as years went by. You did not earn respect because of the wealth you had but because of what you have done to your community. Take a look at the Maa people, the Himba and even the Baganda who had kings. Class as we know it did not exist in most ancient African societies.
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@ Munubantu
The IQ explanation is often given by people who have a personal vendetta against people they fear are superior to them. Or you could say it is an explanation by cowards who do not want to engage the human condition head on; so, they try to create simple misguided explanations for everything. Indians here get business instruction from the time they are young and they organize themselves in such a way to fund each others business ventures. They are very shrewd business people; they will do anything-lie, bribe, murder-to succeed.
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Villagewriter, the level of class differentiation depends on the degree to which the society moves away from clan affiliation, I still don’t see how Africa is unique and ‘naturally anarchistic’ compared to the rest of the human race. There have always been checks on the authority of rulers in most societies. The claim that some people in Africa were still at the clan level of organization tells me that they had not developed to higher levels of social organization. I’d be impressed with his claim if he could show that Ethiopia, Mali, or any of the ancient kingdoms and empires on the African continent showed the “naturally anarchistic” trait he mentions.
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@gro jo
Oh, forgive me I get what you are saying. I though you were simply talking about class. I also disagree with his use of “naturally”. It almost makes African societies look alien in regards to leadership. Though most pastoral societies rejected kingdoms like Mali, Nubia, Egypt for freedom. So they moved south where Europeans found them and decided they were uncivilized not knowing they had run away from civilization.
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@Linda
You’re right, and so please see talibmensah’s comments on the Abubakari II thread about “reputable” “scholars” whose works are distributed by “academic and university publishing houses.”
However, when asked what evidence these “reputable” “scholars” used to draw their conclusions, he had no answer:
“Ralph Austen’s source, I am unsure of, but his ‘Trans-Saharan Africa in World History’ is far more reputable than Ivan Van Sertima’s work”
So to Eurocentrics like talibmensah, it’s OK to trust Ralph Austen before checking to see Austen’s sources/evidence because a university published his works.
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…a Western university.
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@Gro jo
Sunday I’ll have time to put together a list of sources with commentary. I’m stuck on my hamster wheel right now.
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Kartoffel @ I would say people tend to believe authors who are part of and published by instituitons who have a reputation of adhering to academic standard. These institiutions are historically white-dominated. Of course this system has its blind-spots and follies, but it is the best we have to come closer to the truth. Just because they have been wrong in the past, you can’t just go around and start believing to people who don’t adhere to the academic standards.
Linda says,
As Sharina just pointed out,
Your point would be true, if the western Academia was actually ethnically diverse
but because the “standards” are made, checked, and continue to be held as “credible and valid”, by a body of white American/ European academics, then it naturally
already comes with built-in Bias that cannot overcome hundreds of years of prejudiced conditioning.
When someone does not want to accept what you are saying, the first thing they criticize is the “source” and then precede to critique what ever they can to discredit the author.
Click to access Entertainers-or-education-researchers-The-challenges-associated-with-presenting-while-black.pdf
Critiques of black education faculty presentations
The first audience critique they mentioned focused on the research itself:
1) the methodology was not rigorous
(the most common criticism was not having a white control group);
2) sample size was too small (mostly in qualitative studies);
3) the presenter lacked the ability to measure participants’ accuracy
(‘How do we know if the subject is telling the truth?’)
Most African, black American, and other non-white academics are PhD Professors who published and/or work for Institutes or Universities (like Diop).
Diop was right about Egyptians and northeast Africans but it took White scientists to prove him right and that was when white western academia Accepted that they were wrong.
He followed the set standards but his peer reviews remained skeptical –his word and research was not enough for them, until white scientists said so.
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If black scholars challenge any of the already existing work that has been published and accepted by white western academia, then they are
held to different standards and their “evidence” is challenged and scrutinized way more intensely than their white peers.
whereas, most white professors evidence can make more generalized claims and have it be accepted as truth as long as they adhere to basic standards — that’s not blind-spots and follies— it’s called double-standards.
that’s a “system” that manages to accommodate what it wants because the people who set the standards, can change the standards.
and right now, academia accepts that genetic analysis is more or less precise, so Diop won by having to go above and beyond to prove to his peers, that his academic research was valid.
Professor Cornel West’s view on being a black Academic:
the successful black intellectual capitulates, often uncritically, to the prevailing paradigms and research programmes of the white bourgeois academy, and the
“unsuccessful” black intellectual remains encapsulated within the parochial discourses of Afro-American intellectual life.
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Professor Cornell Wests full statements (and I used him because as far as I’m concerned, he is a prime example of a black academic who was more than willing to play “the game” in order to be successful in white-dominated Academia)
http://english.rutgers.edu/docman/redi/68-ade-and-mla-report-review-of-scholarship-on-the-status-of-african-american-faculty-members-in-english-pdf/file.html
Other articles bridge the divide between disciplinary theory and the lived reality of black scholars. In sympathy with Harris’s “Black Nerds,”
Professor Cornel West’s “The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual” considers the decision to become a black intellectual as “an act of self-imposed marginality” (110) since the black community at large is, in his estimation, suspicious of intellectuals and the white intelligentsia remains profoundly racist.
West believes that affirmative action and the managerial ethos of universities cast doubt on young black scholars’ qualifications (“[confusing] diversity with tokenism,” in Gregory’s phrase), making it more difficult for African Americans to access and thrive in intellectual circles.
In addition, the rightward swing of national politics, racial separatism in publishing, and the lack of a sustained institutional tradition of black intellectualism undermine black scholars’ place in the academy.
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Article that touched on the implicit Bias between academic peers
Click to access Entertainers-or-education-researchers-The-challenges-associated-with-presenting-while-black.pdf
This study explored the presentation experiences of 33 black education researchers, who ranged from assistant to full professors in education departments. Reported here are similar narratives about the anticipated entertainment value these scholars were expected to offer and the skepticism they encountered about the academic value of their presentations.
Critiques of black education faculty presentations
We gathered comments from black education faculty about audience reactions to their research presentations, as well as their reflections on those reactions.
The first audience critique they mentioned focused on the research itself:
the methodology was not rigorous (the most common criticism was not having a white control group); sample size was too small (mostly in qualitative studies); the presenter lacked the ability to measure participants’ accuracy (‘How do we know if the subject is telling the truth?’);
as well as accusations of researcher subjectivity, the research not being generalizable, and research data being incomplete
The study participants reported that both black and white colleagues criticized the tone of their research and the essence of the work:
“Hmmm, still trying to take it all in and make some sense of it”,
“Your findings have questionable scholarly value”,
“You are not angry but the research is angry”,
“Your work seems kind of overly emotional,” and
“I get it, I really do, but my fear is that others will not”,
“Hard to believe…because racism is really not that overt anymore”
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I don’t think that is true anymore. Today there is an international scientific community, no longer dominated by Western academia as it was 40 years ago. Africa is still underrepresented, but Asia and South America has made so much headway that the scientific narratives are no longer controlled by Western institutions.
New scholars and institutions of course are under more scrutiny than those who have already established that they adhere to academic standards. And even those will pretty quickly be ripped apart if they at some point don’t. At least when it comes to easily cheched facts, less so with interpretions and paradigms.
@ resw77
“However, when asked what evidence these “reputable” “scholars” used to draw their conclusions, he had no answer:”
Nobody can check the methology of everything he reads. At some point you have to trust the author. That’s why we have peer-review.
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@Linda
Yes, there is racism in publishing and academia, but that doesn’t mean there’s some sort of conspiracy to control the dissemination of information to perpetuate Eurocentrism all the time. Kartoffel is right, academics who focus on African history have moved away, for the most part, from racist colonialist interpretations of Africa’s past. Academia’s general pushback against Afrocentrism isn’t racist, it’s a rejection of the pseudoscience and poor scholarship of people like Maulana Karenga, Leonard Jeffries, and the obsession with race that some Afrocentrists impose on premodern societies. Come on, nobody takes anyone like John Henrik Clark on Chancellor Williams seriously. These guys are writing mythology for black egos, trying to make race the most important thing in human history. Chancellor Williams, for example, has a race-obsessed history of Africa that assumes Europeans and Arabs have always been trying to destroy ‘block’s societies. Hardly appropriate to argue that before colonialism, when ideas of racial superiority became more common?
Diop is better than most Afrocentrists, but he also made mistakes. In his desire to connect Nile Valley with Africa, he perpetuates the notion of a monolithic African -~”culture”. Africa is a vast continent.
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“Maybe, Blacks in different societies and also at World level should begin to network between themselves better than they have already done until now!”
Yes! THIS is long overdue! We have so much catching up to do that it seems prudent to ONLY network with each other!
If we could just bury and put to rest, once and for all, the petty dislikes, suspicions, doubts, distrust … we have against each other that was injected into our slave-minded consciousness as we were torn from our African homelands, languages and cultures.
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I don’t think that is true anymore. Today there is an international scientific community, no longer dominated by Western academia as it was 40 years ago. Africa is still underrepresented, but Asia and South America has made so much headway that the scientific narratives are no longer controlled by Western institutions.
Linda says,
but we are discussing Africa –and their story is still narrated by white western Academia and science, not much has changed.
that’s why in my earlier comments, I stated that it took Asians having to take the lead to force white western academics to stop omitting and appropriating Asian history — and they get more respect than black academics due to intrinsic biases.
there is a larger resistance to African/ black scholars and research
that is not a guess, Kartoffel
“A research grant application from a black scientist to the National Institutes of Health is markedly less likely to win approval than one from a white scientist, a new study reported on Thursday.
Even when the researchers made statistical adjustments to ensure they were comparing apples to apples — that is, scientists at similar institutions with similar academic track records — the disparity persisted. A black scientist was one-third less likely than a white counterpart to get a research project financed, the study found.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045/1015.full
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“talibmensah @Linda
Yes, there is racism in publishing and academia, but that doesn’t mean there’s some sort of conspiracy to control the dissemination of information to perpetuate Eurocentrism all the time.”
Linda says,
that’s not what I said
My point was and is — the Academic standards are SET by white western Scientists and Academia and these standards are based on BIASED world and racial views
and anyone who challenges those views, have to go ABOVE and BEYOND the basic standards accepted between peers, to be seen as Credible.
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@Kartoffel
“Nobody can check the methology of everything he reads.”
And of course, that’s your opinion. I personally question when any historian makes claims without either first-hand documentation or archaeological evidence.
“At some point you have to trust the author.”
That’s your prerogative. And if you’re using that standard, fine. But it’s hypocritical of you or other Eurocentrists like talibmensah to say the author/historian someone else trusts is less trustworthy because he wasn’t published by a Western university.
If you make the claim that your author/historian is more trustworthy than another, then don’t be surprised when I ask “why and how” and am not satisfied with your response that it’s because some western university with a long history of racism was the publisher.
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@talibmensah
“Diop is better than most Afrocentrists, but he also made mistakes”
Such as?
“In his desire to connect Nile Valley with Africa, he perpetuates the notion of a monolithic African -~”culture”.”
Really? In which work was that?
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That’s not always the case though. Many in history and social sciences have moved away from basing everything on Eurocentric standards or perspectives. Look at folks like Jim Sweet who has written about gender and healing, for instance. Or folks who study ‘witchcraft.’ Not everyone is studying these societies with European or ‘white-dominated’ ideas.
Not sure using logic and approaching epistemology in different ways is always biased or Eurocentric, either. What youre getting at is a larger philosophical debate at the nature of knowledge and history. Scholars and philosophers of color have always tackled those debates, too.
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Kartoffel and Talibmensah
I’m not viewing this from a “scholastic” level only, I’m viewing this in Real world
I don’t know what you do for a living, but I work in the medical industry where Implicit Bias rules the day, even though there is a good deal of black, Hispanic, and Asian professional in all areas and fields.
Implicit bias remains a problem – so much so, that each year, we all have to do CEUs that discuss “how not to bring your own prejudiced racial/ethnic views into work with you”
so for you to say that because there are more black, Asian, and Indians in the Scientific and Academic fields than 40 years agos; so therefore — white western values and racial biases are not predominant anymore, is ridiculous.
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Maybe this conversation could progress if everybody stated what they see as sufficient evidence for say, Africans in the Americas before Columbus or the state of literacy in Mali circa 1300? All this talk of Afro-Euro centrism will not be resolved here.
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@Linda
Well said. I wonder whether tablimensah has ever been in a situation where someone thought he wasn’t qualified because of his skin color. His argument about “conspiracy” is very similar to that made by people who either have lived with white people for most of their lives or come from mixed parent homes where one of their parents is black and the other white.
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talibmensah@ Many in history and social sciences have moved away from basing everything on Eurocentric standards or perspectives. Look at folks like Jim Sweet who has written about gender and healing, for instance. Or folks who study ‘witchcraft.’
Linda says,
yes, and in the medical world, these are still called “Alternative Medicine”
and treating patients with practices and medicine that are approved by the government and accredited Associations, is called “Traditional Medicine”
is Jim Sweet black? because that is an illustration of my point–
white academics receive more positive peer reviews when they write about topics that are critical or outside of the norm
than a black or non-white academic writing about the same subject, whose ideas look like criticism of the status quo
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gro jo @ Maybe this conversation could progress if everybody stated what they see as sufficient evidence for say, Africans in the Americas before Columbus
Linda says,
I did already… the skeletons found at Hull Bay that are carbon dated to 1250 AD by the Smithsonian Institue
Click to access Hull_Bay_Skeletons_-_Ubelaker_-_Angel.pdf
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@resw77
Drop was wrong about African languages, a diffusion of Nile Valley civilization to other parts of Africa, and an obsession over race. Ancient Egyptian is related to Chadic, Cushitic, Berber, and Semitic languages. There’s no proof that Ancient Egypt had connections with West Africa, were still unsure of where Punt was located. He was wrong to impose modern concepts of race on ancient societies which didn’t identify as such. His obsession with ancient Egyptian statuary and iconography isn’t a good way to argue what someone’s ‘race’s is.Diop’s work is therefore anachronistic, based on faulty research in linguistics, and fails to prove adequately any ties to ancient Egypt in West Africa.
If it makes some people feel better about themselves, then sure, the early Ancient Egyptians likely looked like people we would call ‘black.’ So what? There were certainly cultural ties and trade with Sudan and the Levant, but Diop hasn’t proved any ties or connections with West Africa or areas further south than Sudan during dynastic Egypt or Kush and Meroe.
The one thing that might show SIMILARITIES between the Nile Valley and West Africa would be if ancient populations in the pre-arid Sahara moved into the Nile Valley and West Africa during the Neolithic period, but that’s still unclear and a subject of debate. Look up Nabta Playa.
Diop was right to show Egypt was “African” but that doesn’t mean much.
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villagewriter, I agree with many of the comments you have made
and Thank you for the first-hand insight into the world of your home, South Africa
it’s great to hear from an actual African native commenter, discussing Africa
instead of us foreigners pontificating about the Continent, as if we actually know jack sh’t about or have lived in Africa.
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@ Linda
As talibmensh said, of course there is racism in academia. But in the form of subconcious biases, not a white conciprcy to surpress evidence. If anything scholars tend to exaggerate evidence. Today with the vast expansion of academic personell and the global scientific network nobody can ignore the results of non-white scholars.
Historical methology is not in itself biased against non-whites.
@ resw77
“I personally question when any historian makes claims without either first-hand documentation or archaeological evidence. ”
As you should. But questioning isn’t enough, you would actually have to check all the evidence, something nobody can do for everything he reads.
“But it’s hypocritical of you or other Eurocentrists like talibmensah to say the author/historian someone else trusts is less trustworthy because he wasn’t published by a Western university. ”
Not hipocritical at all. If something is published by an institution of reputation it gets the benefit of the doubt. If not, it doesn’t.
“If you make the claim that your author/historian is more trustworthy than another, then don’t be surprised when I ask “why and how”.”
Because it is peer-reviewed. People who know as much or more than the author in that specific field say that the author adhered to the academic standards and doesn’t misrepresent the evidence. That makes him more trustworthy than somebody who isn’t.
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@Linda
Thanks. I am actually from Kenya and I am actually glad that more of our people are waking up and realizing that Euro-centric ways of thinking are more valued. I am glad that African Americans are also waking up and visiting the continent to see for themselves and I am excited for the future.
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@ Linda @ villagewriter
Likewise, I wonder if talibmensah has ever had something he said dismissed out of hand, but when a White person says the very same thing, that person is not only taken seriously but praised for it.
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Kartoffel @ Linda
As talibmensh said, of course there is racism in academia. But in the form of subconcious biases, not a white conciprcy to surpress evidence.
Linda says,
As I told Talibmensah, I never said that there was a conspiracy
I told you previously and I’ll say it again, Because of subconscious Bias,
black scholars and research are critiqued harsher, are given less credence and their work in more scrutinized by peer review
and because of “subconscious Bias” –it takes the research being substantiated by white scientists and scholars– for White Academics to accept the word of said black scholar
and even when proven to be true, it the publication receives less attention and is less likely to be sourced by white western scholars.
Hence why it took me using Caribbean sources to find out the information on the Skeletons in Hull Bay.
you have not disproven anything I said
you are just providing EXCUSES as to why I’m supposed to see this racialized behavior as acceptable.
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@Tablimensah
“Drop was wrong about African languages, a diffusion of Nile Valley civilization to other parts of Africa, and an obsession over race. Ancient Egyptian is related to Chadic, Cushitic, Berber, and Semitic languages. There’s no proof that Ancient Egypt had connections with West Africa, were still unsure of where Punt was located. He was wrong to impose modern concepts of race on ancient societies which didn’t identify as such. His obsession with ancient Egyptian statuary and iconography isn’t a good way to argue what someone’s ‘race’s is.Diop’s work is therefore anachronistic, based on faulty research in linguistics, and fails to prove adequately any ties to ancient Egypt in West Africa.”
Diop lived in a period where Africans were called uncivilized and racism was very much accepted by society more than it is now, and you cannot tell why he included race in his assertions? White people had already declared Egypt a white civilization and most of their history professors did not seem to care. As a matter of fact Ancient Egyptian culture is still alive and well in Africa and linguistics is also important connection. Several communities from ancient Nubia or some parts of modern Sudan migrated to West Africa and some west Africans migrated to East Africa. History is politics tablimensah, it was never meant to tell the truth. That”s why we hear that Rome was great when in fact all that was great about it was Greed. Most Romans were peasants living in slums.
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“Likewise, I wonder if talibmensah has ever had something he said dismissed out of hand, but when a White person says the very same thing, that person is not only taken seriously but praised for it.”
Irrelevant, Abagond. Doesn’t make a difference when pointing out how historians and serious scholars are supposed to work, engage in academic debates, familiarize themselves with the academic literature. Some lunatic ranting about melanin supremacy or claiming Europeans and Arabs have ‘destroyed’ ‘black civilizations’ throughout history is dangerous (black supremacy on the part of ‘melanin theory’) and anachronistic for imposing modern conceptions of race on ancient societies. I never said there wasn’t racism in academia, but there’s a process that’s based on standards that involve more than therapeutic lies or exaggerations some Afrocentrists fixate on. I hope you’re not one of those types of Afrocentrists, Abagond.
It’s a waste of time. People interested in African history need to go to school, get degrees from reputable institutions, participate in larger debates, do archaeological research, learn to read the local languages, travel, read the historiography and be careful about inserting race into discussions of history before ‘race’ as we know it existed.
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@ Kartoffel
It is in many cases. Like in New Zealand, where White accounts of history are trusted over Maori ones because the White ones are written, the Maori ones are oral.
Or even in the case of Mali, where written records exist by the boatload, literally, but are little known or studied in the West so it is almost as if they do not exist, while (White) Western accounts are well known.
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@Tablimensah
Are you as passionate about the lies that European and American archaeologists have been religiously dispersing about Egypt, Nubia, Axum and Kingdoms on the African coast? Ali Mazrui an internationally celebrated historian (Kenyan) supported most of Diops work about Africa. I recommend his books to everyone here because they woke me up. Europeans inserted their race in everything and now when we are trying to remove their race from our history, all of a sudden we need absolute proof; give me a break. Israelis to this day talk about slavery in Egypt and hardly any scholar can raise a finger against that lie; what about the vikings visiting America before Columbus; what about the DNA hoax about King Tut and the Irish. Black Africans started the Egyptian civilization, the Nubian civilization and most civilizations in Africa. You probably want to say that some Englishman from the future came and influenced them.
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To sew into a previous thread of conversation-
I had a nebulous idea of what Afrocentrism really meant. I had misspoke. I do not disagree with an Afrocentrist perspective or outlook.
It is not Eurocentrism in blackface. Sure, there are African Americans’ revision of the history of Africa to project their religion or origins in Egypt or sons of Ham. This is a distorted version of history of Africa produced by the erroneous belief of inferiority of self.
It is nothing of the sort. Afrocentrism is affirming and not revisionist. There is nothing faulty per se in an African centrist perception or understanding. It is the re- alignment of vision adjusting the distorted lens of Eurocentrism. It utterly makes sense to me that an Africans or Africans in diaspora would seek to reshape African thinking and scholarship since the ceaseless and perfectly refined machinery of white propaganda seeks to “empty the mind of native “and continue white hegemony in all areas.
It is not merely a faulty viewpoint. It (Eurocentrism) is the white distortionary phenomenon of rewriting history as whites as the genesis or centre of his- story. (Sorry, I am unable to write in academic terms since I am not schooled in academia, least of all, white academia. I am a sculptor). The “happy darkies” or “half-naked savages” are bit players to the grand narrative of the civilizing European where all history and culture proceeds from them. Faulty viewpoint is right, but an understatement, as Eurocentrism wields its many tentacles in every sphere in life. I think that Eurocentrism aims to ossify and maintain its white /European superiority whilst perpetuating their (not ours) big lie of our nothingness and non-history. Afrocentric thinking seeks to speak the truth – it does not have to distort history. Afrocentric analysis posits Africa and Africans as the subject not object, in space , time and location.
.
.
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My understanding of Eurocentrism is that is ahistorical. It makes Europeans/ white Americans/South Africans/Australians the genesis of history. It warmly embraces Hegelian and Kantian dismissiveness of African non- history. So we have Herodotus as the ‘Father of History’, The Greek’s invention of democracy, and Aristotle as ‘Father of Philosophy’. Even though Egypt preceded Greek civilization. They have no sense of irony when they still glorify Christopher Columbus as the ‘discoverer’ the ‘New World’. Even though people were living there for millennia.
Hippocrates is ‘The Father of Medicine’ and Plato is the ‘Father of Philosophy’.
They modern day Eurocentrists want to reject claims of black-skinned ancient Egyptians, who, whilst not only building incredible hypostyles, inimitable pyramids ,sphinxes and stela, influenced Greek civilization want to now to unseat Herodotus as Father of History since Afrocentrists read Book Two of Histories. Their myth making makes sweeping claims of European superiority in all spheres of civilization. Only Europeans have created history over the past three thousand years, beginning with the ancient Greeks which is ascribed to race, culture, religion and geography.
Egypt’s influence on ancient Greece was, vast in not only in art, architecture, astronomy, medicine, geometry, mathematics, law, politics, and religion and history. There is a massive campaign to discredit African influence.
Part of their myth-making propaganda is ‘reason’ is the gift of the Greeks. The Greeks are Europeans, Europeans are white, white people gave the world reason and philosophy.
The Egyptian were/ are black-skinned Africans. Full stop.
The Eurocentrists have built a European history that begins in Greece, with a trajectory to Rome, to Western Europe and to its European settlements.
Paradoxically, this myth must present a conundrum to those white Americans strangely asserting that the ancient Egyptians were ‘white skinned Africans’. But that is another story.
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@Taotesan
Well said. By the way I believe your contribution here is valid whether you are an academic or not.
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“Are you as passionate about the lies that European and American archaeologists have been religiously dispersing about Egypt, Nubia, Axum and Kingdoms on the African coast? Ali Mazrui an internationally celebrated historian (Kenyan) supported most of Diops work about Africa. I recommend his books to everyone here because they woke me up. Europeans inserted their race in everything and now when we are trying to remove their race from our history, all of a sudden we need absolute proof; give me a break. Israelis to this day talk about slavery in Egypt and hardly any scholar can raise a finger against that lie; what about the vikings visiting America before Columbus; what about the DNA hoax about King Tut and the Irish. Black Africans started the Egyptian civilization, the Nubian civilization and most civilizations in Africa. You probably want to say that some Englishman from the future came and influenced them.”
It’s funny how being critical of Afrocentric excess makes me Eurocentric. No, I never bought into the Eurocentric myths passing as ‘history’ either. Ali Mazrui is a respected scholar, I’ve read one of his works. The West and colonialist interpretations of the African past are false and predicated on white supremacy. I never supported any of that nonsense. I never said all of Diop’s work was wrong, just some of his claims about Wolof, linguistics, Nile Valley diffusion of ‘civilization,’ and a number of assumptions based on race or a homogenized ‘Africa.’
There’s still no evidence of Nubians in ancient times traveling to West Africa. We know Nubians moved into Kenya during colonial times. We know that there are Fulani groups in Sudan, but both of these events happened more recently, not 2000 years ago or more. Until we find evidence, there’s no reason to assume Nile Valley civilizations ‘diffused’ further west. That’s like the old theory about Meroe diffusing iron metallurgy into other parts of Africa, an outdated theory scholars continue to debate about.
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@Kartoffel
“But questioning isn’t enough”
I didn’t say I only question, just that “I question.” It’s a lot better than trusting any author/historian just because he’s published by a university, as you’re trying to convince me to do.
“Historical methology is not in itself biased against non-whites”
I didn’t say it was. But Western acadaemia is certainly biased. For example, if you took a medieval world history course at Universität Heidelberg, and your friend took one at the Universität Hamburg, you will both learn from a set of accepted teachings. It would be from a Western European perspective and focus primarily on Western European history.
So if I were a professor at Universität Heidelberg and presented information that was not included in a set of accepted teachings and such information, regardless of the veracity, I’d have a tough time getting published.
“If something is published by an institution of reputation it gets the benefit of the doubt.”
That’s fine if you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it’s very naive since such publications are fraught with OPINION and ANALYSIS and could even ignore evidence and facts. It’s even more naive to automatically reject a non-university-published author’s word when you haven’t confirmed if his word is evidenced.
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@ Taotesan
“The Eurocentrists have built a European history that begins in Greece, with a trajectory to Rome, to Western Europe and to its European settlements.
Paradoxically, this myth must present a conundrum to those white Americans strangely asserting that the ancient Egyptians were ‘white skinned Africans’. But that is another story.”
Do you know that they say that some black people in Africa are actually “black skinned Caucasians” The day I read that I almost puked in my mouth. I mean seriously this obsession with being ”great” in European culture is not healthy.
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@villagewriter
What you’re saying about Nile Valley civilizations spreading civilization throughout the African continent is just the old Hamitic Hypothesis in reverse. Instead of Seligman, who called the ‘Hamites’ whites or ‘dark-skinned whites,’ you’re claiming Egypt and Nubia were ‘blacks’ who somehow helped spread a broad array of civilizations or kingdoms throughout Africa, and there’s not enough evidence for any of that. There were certainly some cultural ties with adjacent African societies, and perhaps long-distance trade that connected the Nile Valley with the Horn, North Africa, and the Levant, but we have yet to find proof that Ancient Egypt or Nubia ‘started’ or ‘founded’ cities or kingdoms in West Africa. What you’re saying is actually quite condescending to West Africans and other parts of the continent, alleging that they had to wait to be ‘civilized’ or develop urbanism and long-distance trade until Egypt or Nubia allegedly appeared.
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@tablimensah
The people we call Nubians now are just a part of the ethnic groups that formed part of the Nubian civilization. They were not the only people running or living in ancient Nubia. Africans ethnic groups have always migrated to different parts of the continent, from Libya to Morocco to Egypt to South Africa (we had thousands of years to do that). So, there is always a chance that some of them stayed on in west Africa. It makes sense to me. Yeah, we don’t know yet that Nile Valley civilizations extended into West Africa but there are some signs-like the languages and beliefs- that show that it could have. So, we cannot dismiss it entirely. You need to know that archaeologists have not really done a lot of work in Africa and so there are a number of things still buried that will surprise the entire world once they come to light.
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@Tablimensah
“What you’re saying is actually quite condescending to West Africans and other parts of the continent, alleging that they had to wait to be ‘civilized’ or develop urbanism and long-distance trade until Egypt or Nubia allegedly appeared.”
That is not what I am saying. Actually, I believe they could have borrowed each others culture and traditions.
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@villagewriter
I agree that ‘Nubia’ was comprised of multiple different groups, and it’s probably bad that we continue to use that word to describe the variety of peoples who occupied southern Egypt and northern Sudan. And yes, some migrated into the ‘Nubian Nile Valley’ from the west or south, so human populations have migrated.
Yes, I concur that human populations have migrated across Africa and around the world for thousands of years. There’s still no evidence of connections between dynastic Egypt or ‘Nubia’ that can be ascertained at the present moment. It’s possible, some date in the future, that there will be archaeological works that maybe challenge the common view that Nile Valley societies or North Africa traded with West Africa before the camel’s introduction, before the spread of Islam. But until we find the evidence, it’s just speculations. And no, we don’t really know of any clear Egyptian or ‘Nubian’ derivations of West African beliefs, either. Human societies living thousands of miles away from each other can simultaneously or at different times develop similar ideas.
The language connection is based in the Afro-Asiatic language family, which Christopher Ehret and SOY Keita postulate arose in northeastern Africa. Over several thousands of years, different branches of the Afro-Asiatic language spread to Asia, North Africa, Egypt, parts of West Africa, and East Africa. Language alone doesn’t prove there were strong similarities or cultural commonalities between dynastic Egypt and societies in West Africa around the same time. Some scholars argue that prehistoric Sahara was a ‘pump’ of African populations and language families because it went through dry and wet phases over 1000s of years. It’s possible that’s how Afro-Asiatic languages spread into North Africa and parts of West Africa (Chadic). We don’t know enough at this state to really say with any certainty what transpired or where the language family arose.
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@Tablimensah
You still cannot dismiss language entirely. How did Europeans connect their possible origin in Asia? through the study of linguistics and DNA has proven some of their ideas. So, do not dismiss language . A mummy of a black child was found in Libya by an Italian scientist a few years ago. The method used to preserve that mummy was strikingly similar to that used by the Egyptians. The mummy was several years older than the Egyptian civilization. There were also hieroglyphics found in the Sahara that were also similar to those in Egypt. So, you really cannot dismiss Diops view, you really cannot. Until you prove that he is wrong that is when I can take you seriously. His ideas make sense and that is what we need for now until he is proven wrong. Just like scientists theorize and then their counterparts disprove them later along the line.
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“ Afrocentricity is a paradigm based on the idea that African people should re-assert a sense of agency in order to achieve sanity. During the l960s a group of African American intellectuals in the newly-formed Black Studies departments at universities began to formulate novel ways of analyzing information. In some cases, these new ways were called looking at information from “a black perspective” as opposed to what had been considered the “white perspective” of most information in the American academy .”
“The Afrocentric paradigm is a revolutionary shift in thinking proposed as a constructural adjustment to black disorientation, decentredness, and lack of agency. The Afrocentrist asks the question, “What would African people do if there were no white people?” In other words, what natural responses would occur in the relationships, attitudes toward the environment, kinship patterns, preferences for colours, type of religion, and historical referent points for African people if there had not been any intervention of colonialism or enslavement? Afrocentricity answers this question by asserting the central role of the African subject within the context of African history, thereby removing Europe from the centre of the African reality. In this way, Afrocentricity becomes a revolutionary idea because it studies ideas, concepts, events, personalities, and political and economic processes from a standpoint of black people as subjects and not as objects, basing all knowledge on the authentic interrogation of location.”
By Dr. Molefi Kete Asante
http://www.asante.net/articles/1/afrocentricity/
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@ villagewriter
Thank you.
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Diop’s view is still a theory, one that remains very debatable. And yes, I am familiar with the ‘Black Mummy’ from Libya. I’ve referenced Saharan cultures earlier, and how some may have moved into the Nile Valley. I don’t know about hieroglyphics or ‘dynastic Egyptian’ influences there, however. Lhote’s claims were found out to be hoax. If some of these ‘Saharan cultures’ moved into the Nile Valley, and others moved into Northwest Africa or West Africa, there would be distant, ancient possible connections to predynastic Egypt. Correlation is not causation, however.
Are you familiar with the Garamantes? They developed a farming society in the Libyan Sahara around 500 BCE that used intensive irrigation and built some pyramids. Romans wrote about them. That’s proof of how some societies could develop in the Sahara, even in arid areas. But archaeologists have found little evidence of trans-Saharan trade in that era.
And I am not totally discounting language. Clearly, Berber, Chadic, and Cushitic languages are related to ancient Egyptian. But languages and cultures are complex, peoples moved around the northern half of Africa during the Paleolithic and Neolithic. Does that mean West African kingdoms that arose in the last 2000 years have much in common with Ancient Egypt? No, not really. There are huge gaps in time, linguistic differences (Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo), and local factors. The X-Group and Ballana cultures of ‘Nubia’ may have moved into the Nile region from the West, but there’s nothing to connect them with West Africa yet.
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Talibmensah, you wrote the following about Diop:
” He was wrong to impose modern concepts of race on ancient societies which didn’t identify as such. His obsession with ancient Egyptian statuary and iconography isn’t a good way to argue what someone’s ‘race’s is.Diop’s work is therefore anachronistic, based on faulty research in linguistics, and fails to prove adequately any ties to ancient Egypt in West Africa.”
If you are correct that modern academics no longer use race in their studies, how do you account for the whitening of King Tut in the recent scientific reconstruction done on his mummy? Why is the scientifically correct Tut at variance with the way ancient Egyptian craftsmen depicted him?
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mvtAVQEkXQ)
(http://www.livescience.com/42296-king-tut-photos.html)
(http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.delange.org/King_Tut/Mvc-001f.jpg&imgrefurl=http://pixshark.com/pharaoh-throne.htm&h=943&w=650&tbnid=SFoz-kw7GdUvTM&tbnh=271&tbnw=186&usg=__7Kwf_OzblCtIa4hFvMMQ5U5KcD0=&hl=en&docid=sDbbdtf260xW-M)
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@villagewriter :
“Africans were okay before the Europeans came. Cattle were wealth, herbalists actually knew how to treat most illnesses, we had barter trade (not dog eat dog capitalism) and most of all we were free from debt because our societies were ran by respected elders. It was all good until a vampire showed up on our shores wanting slaves.”
My thoughts exactly:” We were just fine before they came along”
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@ Abagond
“It is in many cases. Like in New Zealand, where White accounts of history are trusted over Maori ones because the White ones are written, the Maori ones are oral.”
Granted. But that is also an example of how academia has adjusted in recent decades.
“Or even in the case of Mali, where written records exist by the boatload, literally, but are little known or studied in the West so it is almost as if they do not exist, while (White) Western accounts are well known.”
Yes, there are still large clusters of source material who haven’t been studied as much as we would like. We will have a far better understanding of these societies once they have. But that is because of political bias that guides the recource distribution in academia, not a bias of the method.
@ resw77
I don’t get your point. If you would publish something that would go against established opinion, of course it would be put under more scrutiny.
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@Tablimensah
My point is what Diop says makes sense. Until someone actually proves him wrong (when archaeologists actually start digging in Africa) I still believe what he said could be true. I am not trying to say that you are wrong, just that he could have been right.
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@taotesan @villagewriter
That’s a vast generalization for an entire continent. Not all African societies were cattle herders or pastoralists. In fact, many areas of Africa did not have cattle because of the tsetse fly, which severely restricted the use of cattle and horses in parts of Africa.
Not every African society was decentralized or ran by elders. Some African societies used coinage. Some participated in the slave trade in the Indian Ocean or trans-Saharan trade. You have a very romanticized notion of African history. There could be classism, slavery, ‘castes,’ warfare, and many other unpleasant things in Africa’s precolonial past, just like anywhere else in the world.
I am confused as to how over 500 years ago someone can refer to the Europeans as ‘vampires.’ The slave traders simply inserted themselves into the already establish African trading systems and markets in order for the Atlantic Slave Trade to grow. Toby Wilkinson has written about this in the case of West Africa.
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“My point is what Diop says makes sense. Until someone actually proves him wrong (when archaeologists actually start digging in Africa) I still believe what he said could be true. I am not trying to say that you are wrong, just that he could have been right.”
He’s possibly right if we talk about prehistoric migrations, thousands of years before dynastic Egypt. But that doesn’t mean much because cultures, languages, and societies are not static. And according to the work done now, there still isn’t any reason to think West African states that developed around 2000 BP were connected to or had anything in common with early dynastic Egypt, unless we fixate on dark skin.
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@Tablimensah
“That’s a vast generalization for an entire continent. Not all African societies were cattle herders or pastoralists. In fact, many areas of Africa did not have cattle because of the tsetse fly, which severely restricted the use of cattle and horses in parts of Africa.
Not every African society was decentralized or ran by elders. Some African societies used coinage. Some participated in the slave trade in the Indian Ocean or trans-Saharan trade. You have a very romanticized notion of African history. There could be classism, slavery, ‘castes,’ warfare, and many other unpleasant things in Africa’s precolonial past, just like anywhere else in the world.
I am confused as to how over 500 years ago someone can refer to the Europeans as ‘vampires.’ The slave traders simply inserted themselves into the already establish African trading systems and markets in order for the Atlantic Slave Trade to grow. Toby Wilkinson has written about this in the case of West Africa.”
I said Africa was okay, we did not need Europeans to “civilize” us, so your ”romantic” view popped out of your own head. The tse tse fly thing you talk of so confidently was actually found to be false http://www.futurity.org/ancient-herders-africa-tsetse-fly-873562/. So, there you go, quick to support theories made by white men because they are cleverer; I guess. The ”African sold other Africans” tale is yet to be proven- are we talking about captured prisoners of war or a capitalistically driven slavery in Africa? Do you know what slavery meant in Africa and what it meant in merica. Europeans were ”vampires” is a metaphor, they drastically reduced the population of west Africans and raped and pillaged-they were actually worse than vampires. I never said all African societies kept cattle; I am African I know-some were actually farmers (mostly Bantus). Africa was not perfect but by the beard of the first pharaoh, Europeans -white guys-showed us just how bloodthirsty human beings can get. Your Eurocentric ”white guys were not so bad view”, has reached its expiry date.
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@gro jo
Do you mean that silly National Geographic piece, with the image of the ‘white’ Tut on the cover? I don’t pay attention to that as serious scholarship. National Geographic is not exactly a ‘scholarly’ publication. They’ve promoted similar nonsense like the ‘Black Pharaohs,’ as if only the 25 dynasty of Egypt could be ‘black.’ If you want an example of how Eurocentrism remains pervasive in mainstream culture, look at National Geographic or films with ‘white’ Egypt.
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talibmensah @ And according to the work done now, there still isn’t any reason to think West African states that developed around 2000 BP were connected to or had anything in common with early dynastic Egypt,
Linda says,
and why not? Please explain why everyone should ignore the possible link between Northwest African ethnic groups and North East African ethnic groups using linguistics as a basis.
and if you please, can you name exactly which northwest African ethnic group Diop linked linguistically with ancient Egypt/ northeast Africa
and what languages Egyptians /NE Africans spoke prior to the Arabic invasion which made it
I am not saying you are right or wrong, I;m just curious about your view as to “how and why” you are so positive that there is no connection.
and for clarifications sake, so that everyone here is on the same page,
when historians talked about west Africans and Sudan– they did not mean the Sudan that we have now on the eastern side.
They called west Africa “western Sudan” (some people confuse the 2 when discussing)
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“Africans were okay before the Europeans came. Cattle were wealth, herbalists actually knew how to treat most illnesses, we had barter trade (not dog eat dog capitalism) and most of all we were free from debt because our societies were ran by respected elders. It was all good until a vampire showed up on our shores wanting slaves.”
@villagewriter
Your statement was a vast generalization, I am simply adding nuance. And yes, there was slave trading and slave raiding in parts of Africa before the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Ever heard of the trans-Saharan trade? Look up Kanem-Bornu. One of the reasons that kingdom developed was its dependence on selling slaves to Libya and Egypt because it lacked access to the gold of kingdoms further west. In the trans-Saharan trade, some West African states actually sold slaves for horses, and used those horses to raid others for more slaves.
You also have the problem of denying African agency by reducing African history from 1500-1800s as one of ‘vampire’ Europeans depopulating Africa. That’s inane. African societies organized the slave trade. Of course, they didn’t see each other as ‘African,’ but it doesn’t change history. Let’s not give Europeans more power than they really had in African history by exaggerating. It wasn’t until the 1800s when one can say Europeans began to surpass African states in power, industrialization, and weaponry.
Just because slavery was more ‘humane’ in some parts of the world doesn’t mean its any better than plantation slavery.
Thanks for that article. I see that article is from 2015, so very recent data I was not aware of.
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@Linda
I believe I already mentioned the specific language, Wolof. It’s a Niger-Congo language.
Ancient Egyptians spoke ancient Egyptian and Coptic, a language in the Afro-Asiatic family. This family’s spread in the late Paleolithic or Neolithic proves some linguistic affinities in regions of Africa, which may have had something to do with the fluctuations in the Sahara in wet and dry phases. All this shows is that some peoples who moved into the Nile Valley might have some cultural or linguistic (Berber, Chadic) ties with groups in North Africa and West Africa in prehistoric times. It proves that the early Egyptians most likely came from the south or the west (at least in Upper Egypt). Diop’s right that ancient Egypt certainly has ties to Sudan or ‘Nubia,’ and possibly with groups that once occupied the Sahara and moved into the Maghrib.
But the huge differences in time, place, and geography show that we cannot say these prehistoric people were static and never changed over time. Thus, there’s no reason to suggest the West African kingdoms, such as Ghana (Wagadu), may have had any ties to Ancient Egypt. Instead of looking to the Nile Valley, let’s look at local, regional factors.
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@Tablimensah
Africans did not enslave themselves in the Americas. The European Slave Trade was not an African undertaking. Europeans dreamt it up: building the ships to buy and sell people to sail to America, factories, shackles, weapons,et No African person benefitted to the degree that Europeans did from the commerce in African people.
Let us get this straight and out of the way. There is no African Slave Trade, no Transatlantic Slave Trade; only the European Slave Trade. The European Slave Trade because the kidnapping and transporting Africans across the ocean ( we will not going to the nightmare of how they were shipped and all those horrors) was solely a European thing. You know, like apartheid, the Nazi extermination of Jewish people and Dzhugashvili’s Red Terror, the genocide of the Original Americans. The scope of The European Slave trade is unparalled in history. It was not an African enterprise. It was European.
And who created an entire industry of shipbuilding and banking, etc. based on the enslavement of Africans? Who benefitted (and still does) enormously from the evil and vile project of human kidnapping? Was it the Africans who sailed the treacherous Atlantic Ocean of their own volition? Who was it that travelled to Africa in search of captives
Where there are oppressors and the oppressed there will be collaborators. Frantz Fanon had isolated incidents of collaboration among victims of oppression. Black people, to be sure were policemen in the white kakistokratic apartheid regime of South Africa. One would indeed get very strange looks if you blamed apartheid on Black people. Hence , Africans were not equally culpable for the slave trade/enslavement of Africans. Try blaming the kapo or Judenrats for for Nazi atrocities committed against Jewish people. It is morally reprehensible to blame the victims of the Black Holocaust on Africans.
” You have a very romanticized notion of African history”
I have first hand experience of living in apartheid.
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“Let us get this straight and out of the way. There is no African Slave Trade, no Transatlantic Slave Trade; only the European Slave Trade. The European Slave Trade because the kidnapping and transporting Africans across the ocean ( we will not going to the nightmare of how they were shipped and all those horrors) was solely a European thing. You know, like apartheid, the Nazi extermination of Jewish people and Dzhugashvili’s Red Terror, the genocide of the Original Americans. The scope of The European Slave trade is unparalled in history. It was not an African enterprise. It was European.”
I am not blaming ‘Africans’ for the slave trade in the Americas. But you’re exaggerating and ignoring local factors and the existence of slave trading and slave raiding before European demand in the Americas. Europeans rarely ‘kidnapped’ Africans, they were purchased on the coast. Why? Because Africans did not perceive each other as Africans, and slave trading, markets, and access to European or American goods was desirable. The slave trade to the Americas was not Europeans ‘kidnapping’ Africans, but engaging in trade with societies that were relatively equal.
Now, if you concur with Walter Rodney, you could argue that, over time, the slave trade helped underdevelop Africa, but that’s another conversation.
Yes, there was slave trading in Africa before the Portuguese reached West Africa in the 1400s, before the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It’s not about ‘blaming’ anyone, but being historically accurate. Why do you seek to pretend that there was no slave trade across the Sahara, for instance? Why do you ignore how Arabs and Asians engaged in slave trading in the Indian Ocean, East Africa? Zanzibar?
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@taotesean kakistokratic?
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@v8driver
Ah! A spelling mistake- kakistocratic.
I have always referred to the apartheid government who dreamt up laws and totally enforced them and exacted the maximum suffering upon its majority (non) citizens whilst enforcing white minority domination and granting them heaven on earth. I refer them as the worst as in: Greek -Kakistos: worst . Government by the worst citizens.
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Talibmensah wrote:
Yes that’s the piece I meant. I didn’t expect you to take it as serious scholarship, but you must admit that serious scholars such as the Egyptian fellow in charge of antiquities at the time put the imprimatur of his office on it. What I find interesting about this issue is the fact that serious scholars who would have tarred and feathered an Afrocentrist for depicting Tut as black were silent in this instance. I’m not surprised by their reactions because on the façade of the Cairo museum, all of the dynasties are listed except the 25th dynasty!
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@ gro jo
Here are some links to get you started.
The concepts of property right, freedom of contract, and justice were discovered and first developed not by Eurocentric societies but African societies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeer
PDF “African Customary Law, Customs, and Women’s Rights.”
Customary law is fluid not statutory, therefore able to incorporate a more modern view of woman’s rights.
http://works.bepress.com/muna_ndulo/11/
Customary law in Nigeria.
http://www.mynewswatchtimesng.com/sources-classification-n…/
Customary law in South Africa and how it was codified too enhance apartheid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customary_law_in_South_Africa
A general overview of legal pluralism within Africa.
http://www.loc.gov/law/help/africa-customary-law.php
Google customary laws in Ethiopia. Their are numerous PDF’s. I wasn’t able to post the links.
‘The law of the Somalis’ is an in depth book on how customary law functions in decentralized societies.
http://www.amazon.com/…/156…/ref=sr_1_1/104-4383524-4955914…
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Tablimensah@ I believe I already mentioned the specific language, Wolof. It’s a Niger-Congo language. Ancient Egyptians spoke ancient Egyptian and Coptic, a language in the Afro-Asiatic family.
Linda says,
for some reason, I kept thinking it was Igbo that was associated with Egyptians. I never studied what Diop said about the linguistic connections, I’ve just heard references to it on this blog.
interesting that Diop would try to link it to “Wolof”; I’ve read about another African academic, Professor Catherine Acholonu, who linked Egyptian Kemetic/ Coptic to Igbo language:
http://www.academia.edu/10210560/Egyptian_Words_of_Igbo_Origin
“My thesis is that Egypt was the main outpost from where West African Kwa (Kwush/Kush) culture was exported to the rest of the world.
Igbo is the Mega-Kwa language – the Kushite mother-language. Kush is the major bearer of this civilization.
Egyptian Words of Igbo Origin
The Egyptian word for “gods” is NTR or Neter. It means “guardian or watcher”.
Its Igbo equivalent/original is Onetara (meaning – “He who guards and watches” over a thing on behalf of someone else).
Egyptian musi/mose/msi – “to give birth”
(Igbo – mmusi– ” to give birth to many children”)
Egyptian tuf– “to throw away”
(Igbo: tufuo – “to throw away”)
Egyptian: akhu – “fire/light”
(Igbo: oku – “fire/light”)
Egyptian xerkert (pronounced kirkir) – “pieces” (Igbo kirikiri – “pieces” in Orlu dialect)
{just examples, too many to list}
__________________________________
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/igbo/discussion2.htm
more from Professor Catherine Acholonu:
“Igbo is in the family of Niger-Congo languages called Kwa by European linguists, which includes many Nigerian and West African languages like Ashanti, Akan, Yoruba and Benin (Edo).
Igbo, I find to be closest to the original mother of that language family. In fact my finding is that in order to not let the Igbo know that it was their language that birthed the others,
the linguists invented the word Kwa, which was originated from Akwa Nshi (Igbo for ‘First People’, also the local name of the Nigerian monoliths that represent First People on the planet).
This word was used also by the ancient Egyptians to describe the West African, in fact Igbo-speaking, Sea People (Kwush, see Martin Bernal – Black Athena ) who brought civilization to the Aegean and the Levant during the Hyksos (which means ‘Kwush’) Exodus.
Kwush, also pronounced Kush means in Semitic and in Igbo ‘People of the Esh/Eshi’.”
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@Kartoffel
“If you would publish something that would go against established opinion, of course it would be put under more scrutiny”
Precisely. Your statement explains exactly why western acadaemia is biased. It should be about the evidence, not about what goes “against established opinion.”
Thank you very much for your contribution
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Linda says,
just so we all are clear, are you talking about these Ethnic “families”?
This linguistic map of Afro-Semitic speakers includes modern day Ethnic groups in West, North, Central and East Africa
The Sahel/Sahara of the Northwest includes many Afro-Berber/Maghreb like the Zenaga/Sanhaja, Tauregs, Hausa, Fulani, Pulaar, Wolof, Mande_ Soninke/Mandinka,
and other Ethnic groups that lived, traded and interacted with each other across the desert with the (lesser known) Sahel/Sahara groups of the Northeast such as the Kanembu, Toubou, and Tauregs/Fezzan
So, you are stating that you don’t believe that the African people of the Northeast and Northwest are connected or influenced by each other?
I don’t know how that is possible since most of the Sahel/Sahara groups were Nomadic. The spread Islam and the Arabic language among each other.
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I’m also confused by your statements—on one hand, you seem to be denying Diops claim about ancient West Africa having ties to ancient Egypt,
but then you turn around and say, “Diop’s kind of right since African ethnic groups migrated back and forth across the Sahel depending on the fluctuating conditions” .
It’s a Fact that ancient Egypt had ties with Nubia politically and genetically– Diop is not needed to affirm that — the Sudan of today was called Nubia/Meroe/Kush/Aksum, people who also ruled Egypt.
We can all agree that each western and eastern African Empires/Dynasty can “Stand Alone” on their merits and achievements but these people all traded with each other, so
I don’t think anyone can Conclusively state—that they know for a Fact—that different Ethnic groups from different regions are Not connected and did Not influence each other
considering the scope of the empires and the fact that invading armies traveled inland to conquer each other. (ex. the Kanembu Empire{Chad} invading Fezzan, Libya)
if you have Conclusive proof to the contrary, please provide.
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@tablimensah
“I am not blaming ‘Africans’ for the slave trade in the Americas. But you’re exaggerating and ignoring local factors and the existence of slave trading and slave raiding before European demand in the Americas. Europeans rarely ‘kidnapped’ Africans, they were purchased on the coast. Why? Because Africans did not perceive each other as Africans, and slave trading, markets, and access to European or American goods was desirable. The slave trade to the Americas was not Europeans ‘kidnapping’ Africans, but engaging in trade with societies that were relatively equal.”
Oh my. Ask taotesan about the brutality of apartheid in South Africa; maybe that will help you acknowledge that you should never underestimate just how bloodthirsty Europeans can be. Europeans rarely kidnapped Africans-are you serious? You want to tell me that the Europeans were only strictly involved in fair trade with other Africans and frowned upon kidnapping slaves because that would be immoral-give me a break. I am beginning to think you are either partly European or just an apologist for transatlantic slave trade.
Europeans organized raids, supplied guns to increase the raids and blackmailed some rulers to supply them with slaves. The transatlantic slave trade was capitalism in action, so, stop trying to sanitize Europeans they were just as or even more disgusting. They use the same trick in Africa and in the Middle East. Slavery in that one kingdom you have mentioned could have been directly a result of Islam and that kind of trade was never financially viable until the Europeans came-then it exploded. Mind listing more kingdoms in Africa that were involved in enslaving people for profit and not because of war?
History written by Europeans to help deflect the truth about slavery. Once we purge the European narrative that clings on our history like a leech then we will know what really happened for sure.
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@tablimensah
Slave trade among African communities was a foreign concept that gained traction mostly after Islam came to Africa. Tablimensah here makes it seem like slave trade was rampant in Africa before Europeans came and I want him to prove to me by showing me the descendants of the displaced people. Show me in Africa, where millions of people who are originally west African found themselves in an entirely new place in the continent like it is in Brazil and the US because of slavery. Which tribes were involved? whom did they sell the slaves to?what did they use the slaves for? Slavery in all its forms was not good but we still need to know what slavery meant in Africa and what it meant in Rome and what it meant in merica.
I will agree there were African collaborators just like there are collaborators who oppose Black Lives Matter but no one has proven that Africans simply enslaved other Africans to gain monetarily. Do not underestimate European greed when it came to the slave trade because we see here in Africa just how greedy they are; now you are realizing that in America I hope. The greed is not natural it is the effect of capitalism.
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Remember guys, the most profitable items for trade were salt, gold and livestock. Gold was so plentiful but salt was not, so people exchanging gold for salt was not uncommon. But exchanging slaves in a resource rich continent just does not make sense? Some quack of a history professor sneaked that in without us knowing. African nations did go to war and did take prisoners of war and made them servants but something similar to transatlantic slave trade never took place in the continent.
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You did not have “capitalism” in the traditional sense, which literally means taking capital and leveraging that to create more resources. The word loan is foreign to African languages. But you did have trade, commerce, exchange and currencies that were in the form of both coinage and salt. The idea of private property is the basis for customary law. Compensation for damaged or stolen property revolved around resolution and restitution to the victum. If it involved manslaughter then the victum was compensated by the servitude of the “murder” within the clan/tribe. Their were limits on who you could sell private land too, it had to be within the same clan/tribe and when it came to grazing lands ownership was temperary based on who got their first to occupy it. But sheep, goat, products ect could be sold to any clan/tribe.
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@Michael
I agree.
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Michael Jon Barker, thanks for the links, before I read them can you say how these African laws differed from customary laws found in England?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custom_%28law%29
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@talibmensah
‘Drop was wrong about African languages, a diffusion of Nile Valley civilization to other parts of Africa, and an obsession over race. ”
That’s a pretty vague statement. What did he say that was wrong? Examples?
“There’s no proof that Ancient Egypt had connections with West Africa”
In The African Origin of Civilisation, Diop does show many linguistic similiaries between the Wolof and dynastic Egyptian. Why do you think these are just coincidences?
“His obsession with ancient Egyptian statuary and iconography isn’t a good way to argue what someone’s ‘race’s is.”
Who says that’s why he shows Egyptian statuary and iconography? And “reputable” western historians don’t do the same? How else is it that the consensus in western acadaemia is that ancient Egyptians were not black? And what’s your issue with his melanin dosage test?
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@Linda
“if you have Conclusive proof to the contrary, please provide”
When has he ever done that? He makes definitive assertion after assertion with no evidence, but then holds everyone else to a different standard.
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@ resw77
But if these outside opinions do hold up to scrutiny they will enter the academic debate. You insinuated that academia could not be trusted to represent all evidence. To do that you would need people to act acording to secret agenda, just bias wouldn’t so that.
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@ grojo
You asked what eveidence would be sufficient to convince me that there was a) a Malian expedition to cross the Atlantic and b) that they actually landed in the Americas.
That of course is a very hypothetical question, as there is a number of possibilities. First I think that the expedition is unlikely to have happened as they have to my knowledge no big history of long-range reconaissance voyages. If they had that would in my eyes reduce the burden of proof significantly. But of course in history sometimes the unlikely happens. For example it would convince me that they undertook the expedition if we had another source independant of Umari from a ver different context, the closer to the event the better. A tombstone inscription of somebody related to the expedition that refernced it would be great. Of course I have no idea of such sources are even typical for that Malian period.
For proof that Africans reached the American shore archeological or lingustic evidence comes to mind. I don’t know much about that but certainly a mentioning of Islam would be undeniable evidence. That would of course only be proof of contact, not necessarily of the Malian expedition.
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Kartoffel: “First I think that the expedition is unlikely to have happened as they have to my knowledge no big history of long-range reconaissance voyages.”
Not sure what you mean by long-range reconnaissance voyages. Linda showed that skeletons of black people were found on Saint Croix that predated Columbus, furthermore, she makes a good case for the use of seafaring people like the Bidyogo islanders as sailors: “The Bidyogo islanders and people of what is now called Guinea-Bissau, were a part of the Mali Empire. They were known for their maritime navigational skills and boat building.
(they were able to defeat the Portuguese back in the 1400s because they had “war canoes” which were faster than the Portuguese ships)
The Malian rulers would have used artisans and builders from the local river or Atlantic Ocean clans to build their ships/canoes. ”
“In pre-European colonial times, the islands were central to the trade along the coast of West Africa and they built up a powerful navy. In 1535, this enabled them to rout the Portuguese, who later built a fort on Bissao, which was abandoned in 1703.[2] The islands were not formally annexed by Portugal until 1936.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bissagos_Islands.
Given the wealth of Mali, They could also have hired East African sailors who have sailed the Indian ocean for over a thousand years (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/science/anthro/2001-01-07-e-african-seafarers.htm.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNFEONFKyDw)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgloJZq5jhk)).
Recife, Brazil is only 1708 nautical miles from Banjul, Gambia, Mombassa, Kenya is over 2000 nautical miles from Mumbai, India, trips between India and East Africa were routinely traveled for hundreds of years. Mansa Musa had no compelling reason to lie to his hosts, so I think that at least one attempt was made to see what was on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, when that failed, either Abu Bakr II was removed from power or he gave it up and went off to see for himself. What became of him and his expedition is subject for speculation, what’s certain, in my opinion, based on Mansa Musa’s testimony, no further explorations were made after the second one, if it did take place, failed to return.
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@villagewriter
When did I try to ‘sanitize’ or ‘defend’ Europe? Europeans were the ones who developed colonies, plantations, and built the slave ships. But you can’t say they forced Africa into providing slaves. Slave trading and slave raiding existed in various parts of Africa before and during the height of the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Indeed, slavery and the slave trade continued long after being abolished. Slave trading occurred in the Sahel and across the Sahara into the 1900s. It’s funny that you think me pointing out that Africans were not “forced” to engage in trade with Europeans somehow means I am an apologist for European colonialism in the Americas or the development of plantation slavery.
If you want to learn more, I suggest you go to the library and read works on African history. The UNESCO General History of Africa series is extensive, but a good overview. Scholars who focus more on the slave trade to the Americas or slavery include many. John K. Thornton, Miller, Sylviane Diouf, Toby Green, Bouabacar Barry, Jim Sweet, Heywood, Walter Rodney, Du Bois, Philip Curtin, Ronald Segal, Orlando Patterson, Eric Williams, Inikori, Lovejoy, and many others have written about the trans-Atlantic slave trade. There’s a reason it’s called slave ‘trading’: Two groups engaged in trade! Europeans sold a variety of things (manufactured goods, gunpowder, alcohol, metals, textiles) in exchange for captives from people on the coasts of West and West Central Africa.
We also have accounts by slaves and former slaves describing their capture in Africa and sale on the coasts to Europeans, surviving the Middle Passage, etc. If you do some research, you will find scholars have also written about descendants of slaves within certain ethnic groups or regions of Africa, too. Such as, the impact of colonialism on local labor practices in the 19th century, or how some societies responded to the British ‘suppression’ of the international slave trade.
@Linda
Look, Linda, my point was made numerous times. If you go back far enough into prehistoric times, you can find all sorts of links between different regions of Africa. But that’s just the problem: you’d have to go back thousands of years before the rise of dynastic Egypt or the earliest known cities or states in West Africa. Cultures and languages change all the time, so it’s doesn’t prove any direct or close ties between societies that existed at different times, places, and across vast distances. Ancient Egypt certainly seems to have much stronger ties with northern Sudan and evolved along the Nile in a specific region of the African continent. It’s possible, if you go back into prehistoric times, groups that moved into the Nile Valley may have moved into the Nile River Valley from the West, and perhaps, some of those people moved into the Maghrib or parts of West Africa. But we’re talking about a continent here and over thousands of years. If you go back far enough into prehistoric human migrations, you’ll find we’re all obviously connected if you go back far enough.
Diop’s right to connect Egypt to ‘Nubia.’
I’ve never heard of anyone trying to connect Igbo to ancient Egyptian. I’ll have to look into that later, but seems unlikely given that both languages are generally accepted as belonging to different language families.
@gro jo
Are you referring to Zahi Hawass? He always struck me as someone who was more about promotion and preservation. Anyway, National Geographic is garbage. If I remember correctly, they also admitted that they ‘guessed’ Tutankhamen’s skin color in their reconstruction. So, it’s clear National Geographic, Zahi Hawass, and the team that did the project have some bias. Isn’t it true that Zahi Hawass lost his position in Egypt, because he was tied with Mubarak?
@resw77
Melanin dosage tests? Don’t recall bringing that up. I’ve read a study by German scientists that analyzed epithelial cells of New Kingdom-era elites from Upper Egypt. The scientists were more interested in studying health and skin disease, but they did allege the remains were packed with melanin levels one would expect in ‘Negroid’ people. That’s not much of a surprise. Why would anyone think ancient Egyptians, especially from Upper Egypt, would not be dark-skinned in the New Kingdom period? Even today, people in Upper Egypt tend to be browner and darker-skinned than those in the northern part of the country or Nile Delta. I’ve already stated that the Ancient Egyptian population most likely resembled people we consider ‘black’ today, if it matters so much to some.
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@res
I’ve already addressed some of the problems you arose. The established classification systems of African languages show Diop was wrong about Wolof. If you like, I suggest you read Christopher Ehret (who specialized in African languages), Greenberg, Blench, Keita. Wolof is a Niger-Congo language, the languages in West Africa that are known to be distantly connected to Ancient Egyptian are Hausa, Tamashek, Arabic (Chadic, Berber, Semitic).
“How else is it that the consensus in western acadaemia is that ancient Egyptians were not black?”
It’s been a while since I’ve read Diop, but yes, he wastes time getting into statuary and iconography as somehow pertaining to ‘race’ or ‘color.’ There was one debate on a possible mural from the New Kingdom period in which Diop alleged it showed how Ancient Egyptians depicted themselves as ‘Negroid’ alongside depictions of Kushites. Refresh my memory if I am wrong, it’s been a few years since I’ve read Diop.
Why do you assume the consensus is that Ancient Egyptians were not ‘black?’ That’s quite a generalization. Have you read anything by Toby Wilkinson, Fekri Hassan, Yurco, Bard? Even Leftkowitz, a critic of Afrocentrism, admitted that the Ancient Egyptian population were, if we had to put a label on them, ‘black.’ The Egyptologists or archaeologists and historians who mention the ‘race controversy’ with nuance and attention to detail are avoiding the concept of race. It’s not about calling ancient peoples black, white, brown, or green. The desire is to avoid imposing racial constructs on ancient societies.
The only people who call Ancient Egypt ‘white’ or ‘black’ are the Eurocentrists and Afrocentrists. Unfortunately, US popular culture bears Eurocentric bias, so films and TV often use ‘white’ actors to portray people in Ancient Egypt.
What your problem here is an obsession with imposing racial labels on societies in the very distant past. Keita himself, because he argues against the concept of race as scientifically valid, avoids ascribing ‘racial’ labels to Ancient Egypt or Nubia. But if you ‘force’ his hands, Keita has, at least in one lecture on Youtube, conceded that the population were likely ‘browner’ in the past than what we see in Egypt today.
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Here’s a quote showing how one can affirm Ancient Egypt as ‘African’ without using race. Archaeologists and physical anthropologists seem to concur that early Ancient Egypt and ‘Nubia’ were very similar to each other and their physical features are within the range for what we see today. Since people in northern Sudan and southern Egypt are still ‘brown’ or ‘black,’ one could say Lovell, if you want to impose ‘race’ on her statement, would agree that Egypt and ‘Nubia’ were connected to each other and darker-hued peoples.
“There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas.” (Nancy C. Lovell, ” Egyptians, physical anthropology of,” in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332).
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@tablimensah
You are yet to answer my question. Show me the descendants of the displaced populations from west Africa that found themselves in other parts of Africa. I already said the slave trade in the Sahara is linked to the Arabs that made their way into those regions.
“It’s funny that you think me pointing out that Africans were not “forced” to engage in trade with Europeans somehow means I am an apologist for European colonialism in the Americas or the development of plantation slavery.”
I hope you had a good laugh. Right there in that statement you are trying to sanitize the European slave trade. In that respect you are an apologist. You have ruled out the possibility that Europeans forced their way into West Africa while at the same time tried to propagate the lie that slavery was rampant in Africa before they came. Provide a link please. Europeans were deeply involved in slave trade and they benefited tremendously out of it. They forced their will everywhere they went. Here is what I got from your statement.
“The Europeans went on a voyage (after looting and committing genocide in the Americas) and they reached a strange land full of people with dark skin. But what surprised them even more was that these black people offered to sell them other black people. The voyagers were shocked but because they they were such nice people, they decided to buy the slaves. Then they sailed away into the sunset.”
You are trying to make the transatlantic slave trade look less messed up by throwing in the Sahara slave trade,which was motivated by different factors. You deliberately refused to acknowledge the contribution of the Arabs and tribal wars to the slavery in the Sahara. The transatlantic slave trade was worse than the holocaust, not just because it was motivated by racist ideology and capitalism but also because of the impact it had on economies in West Africa and the mental health of many African Americans. So, slavery in the Sahara cannot be compared to the transatlantic slave trade. I won’t accept that kind of thinking because it has a very evil disgusting agenda behind it. Its like trying to sanitize Hitler by saying that Jews financed him.
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@villagewriter
My insomnia has paid off, this morning, since I can reply to your silliness. Did you check any of the writings by the scholars I’ve alluded to?? Do some research, otherwise we’re wasting time.
“You are yet to answer my question. Show me the descendants of the displaced populations from west Africa that found themselves in other parts of Africa. I already said the slave trade in the Sahara is linked to the Arabs that made their way into those regions.”
Check out the historians alluded to above. There are studies on descendants of slaves among the in various parts of Africa, such as the Sahel, Zanzibar, Nigeria, Dahomey, etc. Arabs didn’t cause the slave trade across the Sahara, either. Do you understand what trade means??? Descendants of those ‘West Africans’ can be found in the Maghrib today, the so-called Haratin and Gnawa music indicate West African connections.
“I hope you had a good laugh. Right there in that statement you are trying to sanitize the European slave trade. In that respect you are an apologist. You have ruled out the possibility that Europeans forced their way into West Africa while at the same time tried to propagate the lie that slavery was rampant in Africa before they came. Provide a link please. Europeans were deeply involved in slave trade and they benefited tremendously out of it. They forced their will everywhere they went. Here is what I got from your statement.”
How am I sanitizing it? By saying Europeans weren’t strong enough to conquer Africa in the 1400s through the early 1800s? I’ve already said the Middle Passage and slavery in the Americas were horrendous, I am not trying to ‘shift the blame’ or argue against reparations, like Henry Louis Gates. The Portuguese tried to engage in slave raids in the 1400s in West Africa, and they faced local resistance, some of which is alluded to in the comments on this post. How am I lying that slavery wasn’t important in Africa? Various ethnic groups sometimes engaged in warfare or conflicts, captives were taken, some were incorporated into their societies as servile labor or sold to other ethnic groups or societies. I’ve already given you examples from West African history. I am not denying that the Europeans tried to fight African populations sometimes, but that’s not what really happened for most of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to have lasted for so long and to include over 10 million people.It would have been against their long-term interests to engage in constant wars with local Africans on the coast, since the Europeans were unable to travel into the interior of much of West Central and West Africa until the late 1700s (Mungo Park) and 1800s. So, basically, there’s no evidence that Europeans were able to impose their will everywhere they went in West Africa because they faced local resistance, entered into negotiations with local traders and elites, and tropical disease and lack of military superiority limited European expansion into the interior of West and Central Africa.
“You are trying to make the transatlantic slave trade look less messed up by throwing in the Sahara slave trade,which was motivated by different factors. You deliberately refused to acknowledge the contribution of the Arabs and tribal wars to the slavery in the Sahara. The transatlantic slave trade was worse than the holocaust, not just because it was motivated by racist ideology and capitalism but also because of the impact it had on economies in West Africa and the mental health of many African Americans. So, slavery in the Sahara cannot be compared to the transatlantic slave trade. I won’t accept that kind of thinking because it has a very evil disgusting agenda behind it. Its like trying to sanitize Hitler by saying that Jews financed him.”
I’m not interested in Oppression Olympics. I don’t really care if the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade is ‘worse’ or equally immoral when compared to the Holocaust. Both were horrible.
How am I making it look messed up? I’ve already said the Middle Passage and what happened in the Americas was nothing but horrendous. How am I denying the contribution of Arabs? Arabs, Berbers, and ‘Blacks’ traded, fought, influenced each other. Slave trading and slave raiding happened. Some sold excess captives to others. It happened in kingdoms like Kanem, Bornu, East Africa, Mali, the Sahara, etc.
Do you concur with Walter Rodney that the trans-Atlantic slave trade helped underdevelop Africa? That’s still debatable in scholarly circles, but a very interesting theory.
I am not comparing trans-Saharan trade with the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in any other way except to reveal it was one of many areas in which slave trading occurred before the trans-Atlantic trade or the Europeans. Slave trading was common in many parts of the world before the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Doesn’t mean I’m saying it was on the same scale as what transpired in the Middle Passage or the hellish plantations of the ‘New World.’
The Holocaust/Hitler analogy is a bad one and irrelevant. You’re describing an event which occurred in the 20th century when I’m talking about something that began over 500 years ago, before concepts of racial inequality were established. Africans didn’t conceive of each other as ‘Africans’ or ‘blacks’ when selling people of different ethnic backgrounds to each other. And what transpired in the trans-Atlantic case is one in which Europeans may have developed theories of racial inferiority over time, but to many societies in West and West Central Africa, ‘race’ wasn’t the way they perceived themselves or others. It’s not ‘blaming Africa’ to point out that Europeans were unable to conquer or impose their will on Africa before the rise of colonialism in the 19th century.
I am shocked. Why do you think Africans were so passive as historical agents?
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@tablimensah
“Check out the historians alluded to above. There are studies on descendants of slaves among the in various parts of Africa, such as the Sahel, Zanzibar, Nigeria, Dahomey, etc. Arabs didn’t cause the slave trade across the Sahara, either. Do you understand what trade means??? Descendants of those ‘West Africans’ can be found in the Maghrib today, the so-called Haratin and Gnawa music indicate West African connections.”
How many people from those communities found themselves in those places? Are those the descendants of slaves primarily or of west Africans who have always traveled and migrated to different parts of Africa anyway? Arabs enslaved Europeans but you want to to say that they never did the same thing in Africa? Of course, slavery to them had nothing to do with race but mostly because of culture and to some extent religion. So, they could not enslave their fellow black Muslims.Some of the ethnic groups around west Africa adopted this culture when they became Muslims. Those historians alluded they have not proven it to be a fact. I am not saying that slavery did not exist in Africa, but that the arguments you provide seem to suggest that West Africans initiated the transatlantic slave trade and that the Europeans just joined in. The Europeans built a structure that would allow the unimpeded flow of slavery and they used force as often as they could. They played African rulers against each other and gained from the fall out- you don. The people you talk of in Zanzibar have no connection to West Africans.
Prove to me that Europeans did not use force often. Do not give me allusions from European academics- most of them know nothing about Africa.
“How am I making it look messed up? I’ve already said the Middle Passage and what happened in the Americas was nothing but horrendous. How am I denying the contribution of Arabs? Arabs, Berbers, and ‘Blacks’ traded, fought, influenced each other. Slave trading and slave raiding happened. Some sold excess captives to others. It happened in kingdoms like Kanem, Bornu, East Africa, Mali, the Sahara, etc.”
Slavery in those places you mentioned was mostly because of war captives and to feed demand for slaves in the Middle East and from Europeans. Yes and the places you mentioned have Islam and cultures similar to the Arabs. These were places where Islam was practiced and trade with Arabs was very common. So, do not sell me the “Arabs had nothing to do with it” nonsense. That includes the East African coast where the Omani Arabs reigned supreme.
You seem to think I am trying to make ancient Africa look exceedingly romantic but that is not what I am saying. Slavery, I maintain, was mostly a foreign concept that found its way into Africa through trade and war with the Arabs. Africans never considered themselves as one people, same with Europeans and even Asians-only a fool would believe that they did that. But they also never sold other blacks to slavery until they started trading with Arabs. No one can prove that they did that before the Arabs came- I am very skeptical of White European theories about Africa as a whole (the theories you seem to love).
“The Holocaust/Hitler analogy is a bad one and irrelevant. You’re describing an event which occurred in the 20th century when I’m talking about something that began over 500 years ago, before concepts of racial inequality were established. Africans didn’t conceive of each other as ‘Africans’ or ‘blacks’ when selling people of different ethnic backgrounds to each other. And what transpired in the trans-Atlantic case is one in which Europeans may have developed theories of racial inferiority over time, but to many societies in West and West Central Africa, ‘race’ wasn’t the way they perceived themselves or others. It’s not ‘blaming Africa’ to point out that Europeans were unable to conquer or impose their will on Africa before the rise of colonialism in the 19th century.
I am shocked. Why do you think Africans were so passive as historical agents?”
There are many ways to impose your will; conquering is just one of them- look at American imperialism in Africa and parts of Asia. Who said that Africans were passive? I said that slavery existed in Africa especially in places that had contact with the Arabs; who by the way enslaved even the Europeans in some stage in history. I am simply resisting your attempt at making the Europeans only dipped their fingers into slavery simply because it existed. Europeans created systems and structures; they built ships, came up with ideologies, built ports, occupied Islands simply for slavery. They had guns to use to force rulers who did not want to trade with them and presents for communities that already had that kind of trade. They were in it to own it not to participate and it laid the ground for full colonization of Africa. When they came to Africa they knew what they were coming for; they knew what they wanted.
Europeans had the guns and the greed; you want to tell me that they did not use that power to totally control slave trade in Africa-you must be out of your mind. Your insomnia could be the reason behind that. You can shout over the mountains your lewd propaganda but I will not accept your attempt at sanitizing Europe. The Arabs participated in slavery but their actions are dwarfed by European greed and blood-thirst. If you think that is oppression Olympics, then that’s your problem not mine.
Slavery existed in most societies that is a fact. But are the Slavs still slaves, are the enslaved of East Africa still slaves ,are the Germanic tribes still slaves? No, if they were, we would still be talking about their slavery with a lot of passion.
The fact is that the transatlantic slave trade was worse than any form of slavery that ever existed. Its effects are still present to this day and the descendants of those slaves are still slaves. The ideology behind that slavery still exists and affects the lives of millions in the Americas and in Africa.
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How are the arguments that you are trying to smear all over this blog different from white people who say- when they encounter transatlantic slavery- that most people in the past were slaves including Europeans. Or that Africans sold other Africans. I am sick of this madness because it is an attempt to wipe out slavery that existed very recently in history. Several people who I know that are in America studying have had to encounter the “you sold us” statement from some African Americans. Who told them that Africans sold them? The same Europeans who profited from slavery and colonialism. Isn’t it a clever way of making people feel even worse about themselves when you tell them that their own race sold them; pretty clever. They even hardly have to use that excuse often when there are numerous tablimensahs out there to spread it.
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For anyone who cares about the truth. http://raceandhistory.com/selfnews/viewnews.cgi?newsid1076859043,27424,.shtml
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From Race and History website
slam, Colourism and the Myth of Black African Slave Traders
“Africans in the Diaspora have the challenge of rewriting a history that has been stained by years of distortions, omission and downright lies. One of the biggest challenges of rewriting this history has been the Atlantic Slave Trade, and one of the biggest sore points has been the idea that “Black Africans sold their own into slavery”. A lack of information, a paucity of expansive scholarship and an unwillingness to have a serious discourse on Colourism as it existed in Africa even before European intervention, has contributed to this. Diaspora Africans are often quite naïve and will do anything to hold fast to the illusion that ” we are all Africans” and ignore the racism that has existed among a group that is far from uniform.
In looking at the issue of Colourism I could not help seeing the links between the role of Islam in Africa and the role of Africans in the slave trade. The book, Islam and the Ideology of Slavery by John Ralph Willis is very helpful in looking at the almost imperceptible link between the enslavement of ‘kufir’ non-Muslims or infidels, and the belief that Black Africans were not only heathens but inherently inferior. This is not a new thought and certainly not one that originated with the Muslims coming into Africa. Several Jewish exegetical texts have their own version of the mythical Curse of Ham being blackness. Given the common origins of these two major religions, it is thus not surprising that both Jews and Muslims played some of the most important roles in the enslavement of Black Africans next to the Europeans.
In an article by Oscar L. Beard, Consultant in African Studies called, Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery? he says “Even the case of Tippu Tip may well fall into a category that we might call the consequences of forced cultural assimilation via White (or Red) Arab Conquest over Africa. Tippu Tip’s father was a White (or Red) Arab slave raider, his mother an unmixed African slave. Tip was born out of violence, the rape of an African woman. It is said that Tip, a “mulatto”, was merciless to Africans.”
The story of Tippu Tip who is one of the most widely known slave traders has always posed a problem for historians, especially Afrocentric historians in the Diaspora trying to find some way to reconcile themselves to the idea of an ‘African slave trader’. The fact that Tippu Tip was not only Muslim, but ‘mulatto’ is vital. The common ideology of Judaism and Islam where Black Africans are concerned is certainly no secret. While in some Islamic writings we see an almost mystical reverence for Africans, especially an over sexualized concept of Ethiopian women who were the preferred concubines of many wealthy Arab traders and Kings, in others there is distinct racism. Add to this the religious fervor of the Muslim invaders, their non-acceptance or regard for traditional African religions, and the obvious economic and political desires for which religion was used as a tool, and we get an excellent but little spoken of picture of Islam in Africa.
Historians did not often record or think of the ethnicity of these ‘Africans’ who sold their brothers and sisters into slavery. As part of our distorted historical legacy, we too in the Diaspora buy the idea that all Africans were uniform and ‘brothers’, but the true picture, especially at this time was not so. Centuries of contact with Europe, Asia, North Africa produced several colour / class gradients in the continent, divisions fostered by the foreigners. This may have been especially prominent in urban and economic centres. When we combine the converting, military force of Islam sweeping across western and eastern Africa placing a virtual economic stranglehold on villages and trading centers that were Kufir, with the intermixing of lighter-skinned Muslim traders from the North and East Africa creating an unprecedented population of mixed, lighter skinned Africans who began to form the elites of the trading classes we can see how a society begins to change.
Some historians have tended to downplay, or completely ignore the potential for change in scenario. It has even been suggested that one cannot transplant a modern day problem outside of its historical context. However, we see this creeping problem of colourism occurring all over the continent. In the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique where European traders and administrators were encouraged to intermarry, the elitist, trader class was largely Mulatto and Catholic. If we look at the situation in Ethiopia with the age-old oppression of the original Ethiopians, the Oromo of indigenous Cushitic stock, by the more Arabized Amhara this too has its roots in colour prejudice. There were hints of this occurring in many other instances at crucial points of contact between indigenous black Africans and lighter-skinned foreigners or mixed Africans and the most significant of these were in the areas of severe Islamic incursion.
Many towns and villages converted to Islam because of the protection that the military banner of Islam could offer them in a changing economic, political and social landscape. But the more damaging result was the many light skinned, converted Africans, children of mixed encounters that now felt a sense of superiority over their dark skinned, black African counterparts. Colourism is indeed of ancient vintage. The truth of the matter is that fair skinned Arabs’ racist attitude towards Blacks existed even before they invaded Africa. The evidence for this can be found in how they dealt with the Black inhabitants of Southern Arabia before they entered Africa as Muslims. Discerning readers and thinkers can look at this and many other accounts of this time and get a clearer picture of the inherent racism of this situation. When we combine this with the desire for African slave labour by Europeans it was no large feat for these often lighter skinned, Islamized Africans to enslave the black kufir, whom they barely endowed with a shred of humanity. And of course jumping on their bandwagon would have been those black Africans with deep inferiority complexes, who would have been only too eager to do the duty of the ‘superior’ Muslims in an effort to advance themselves. These facts are certainly not hidden and the patterns are everywhere, even today but it is we who do not like to see. For centuries we certainly have not been conditioned for Sight.
This leads us to another direct way colourism played itself out in the slave trade and this is in the ‘type’ of Africans who were enslaved. The biggest victims of slavery were undoubtedly the darkest Africans of what was called the “Negroid” type. If you look at old maps and documents by early European explorers you can note that the parts of the continent that they explored was divided by their crude definitions of what they saw as different African ethnicities. The regions of West and Central Africa were seen as the place of the “Negroes” which was distinct from Ethiopian Africans and even more so the lighter, more Arabized North Africans. We cannot say that NO Africans we taken from the north, but by and large most slaves that came to the West Indies, Americas etc were of the type mentioned above.
Beard continues, “In reality, slavery is an human institution. Every ethnic group has sold members of the same ethnic group into slavery. It becomes a kind of racism; that, while all ethnic groups have sold its own ethnic group into slavery, Blacks can’t do it. When Eastern Europeans fight each other it is not called tribalism. Ethnic cleansing is intended to make what is happening to sound more sanitary. What it really is, is White Tribalism pure and simple.” But the thing is that this thing we call ‘slavery’ never was a uniform institution. When people speak of slavery they immediately think of chattel slavery as practiced as a result of the Atlantic Slave Trade and apply this definition to indigenous African servitude systems, which bore little or no resemblance to chattel slavery. It is misleading to say, “Every ethnic group has sold members of the same ethnic group into slavery. It becomes a kind of racism; that, while all ethnic groups have sold its own ethnic group into slavery, Blacks can’t do it” as it denies the complexities of that particular colonial, chattel slavery situation that existed between Africans and Europeans.
Servitude systems that existed in Africa, and in other indigenous communities cannot be compared to racist slave systems in the Western world and to this day we attempt to try to see this slavery in the same context. People bring up accounts of Biblical slavery, of serfdom in Europe and yes, of servitude in Africa and attempt to paint all these systems with the same brush. However NO OTHER SLAVE SYSTEM has created the never-ending damaging cycle as the Atlantic Slave Trade. West Indian poet Derek Walcott has stated his feeling that our penchant for forgetting is a defense mechanism against pain, that if we were to take a good hard look at our history, at centuries of victimization, it would be too much for us to handle and we would explode. Well I say we are exploding anyway and in many cases from bombs that are not even our own. We have begun the long hard road of rewriting our ancient history, of recovering our old and noble legacy. Let us not stop and get cold feet now when the enemy now appears to take on a slightly darker hue. We must look at the slave trade in its OWN context, complete with all the historic and psychological peculiarities that have made it the single most damaging and enduring system of exploitation and hatred ever perpetrated in the recent memory of mankind. Until we do we will not escape its legacy.”
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Links on Africans sold other Africans (Abagond forgive me for going off-topic)
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/30/145.html
http://www.uhurusolidarity.org/2014/09/08/next-time-someone-says-but-africans-sold-themselves-into-slavery-send-them-this-article/
http://www.reunionblackfamily.com/apps/blog/show/11782086-we-did-not-sell-each-other-into-slavery
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“@gro jo
Are you referring to Zahi Hawass? He always struck me as someone who was more about promotion and preservation. Anyway, National Geographic is garbage. If I remember correctly, they also admitted that they ‘guessed’ Tutankhamen’s skin color in their reconstruction. So, it’s clear National Geographic, Zahi Hawass, and the team that did the project have some bias. Isn’t it true that Zahi Hawass lost his position in Egypt, because he was tied with Mubarak?”
Yes he’s the one I alluded to in my comment. Concerning Diop, you claimed: “He was wrong to impose modern concepts of race on ancient societies which didn’t identify as such. His obsession with ancient Egyptian statuary and iconography isn’t a good way to argue what someone’s ‘race’s is.Diop’s work is therefore anachronistic, based on faulty research in linguistics, and fails to prove adequately any ties to ancient Egypt in West Africa.” It seems to me that the National Geographic team ignored “ancient Egyptian statuary and iconography”, avoiding Diop’s ‘error’ and came up with white Tut. They adhered to the strictures you stated above so how can you say they were biased? If they were biased, where was the hue and cry that arose when Black Athena was published? Are some biases more acceptable than others? Why didn’t any reputable scholars take exception to white Tut, when It’s likely that the real Tut looked like Ahmed Mohamed?
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@talibmensah
“The established classification systems of African languages show Diop was wrong about Wolof. ”
I asked what Diop said that was “wrong” and you gave me another biased opinion of yours. That’s not a specific example.
And Just because western acadaemia does not classify Wolof as an so-called “Afro-Asiatic” language does not mean there aren’t common words between Wolof and ancient Egyptian.
What Diop actually does in his book is list numerous terms that sound and mean the same in both languages. This is comparative work.
“It’s been a while since I’ve read Diop, but yes, he wastes time getting into statuary and iconography as somehow pertaining to ‘race’ or ‘color.’ ”
I think Diop shows images and says things like, and I quote, “Compare this with” or “The reader will judge.” This is for the many people who say things like ancient Egyptians don’t look black, and to counter the many images shown by western acadaemia and on television.
“Why do you assume the consensus is that Ancient Egyptians were not ‘black?’ ”
Because National Geographic, PBS, media outlets, museums, etc. all refer to Kushite leaders as the “Black Pharoahs,” but not in reference to Egyptian leaders. Egyptologist also generally consider ancient Egyptians as “not black”.
“Have you read anything by Toby Wilkinson, Fekri Hassan, Yurco, Bard? Even Leftkowitz”
Not only do they represent a tiny minority among western “Egyptologists.” using your standard, Wilkinson, Hassan and Bard are not trustworthy because their major works have not been published by a university publisher.
Frank Yurco, who is also not trustworthy, does not believe Egyptians were “black.” And Mary Lefkowitz is not an Egyptologist and so she can’t possibly be considered an expert on Egypt.
“The only people who call Ancient Egypt ‘white’ or ‘black’ are the Eurocentrists and Afrocentrists. ”
That’s your opinion, and mine is that most western historians are Eurocentric.
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No citations, but interesting…
http://www.brycchancarey.com/slavery/chrono2.htm
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@talibmensah
“Melanin dosage tests? Don’t recall bringing that up. ”
You didn’t, I just asked you that question because it seemed you thought Diop’s arguments hinged on “His obsession with ancient Egyptian statuary and iconography isn’t a good way to argue what someone’s ‘race’s is.”
He used myriad things to make his case, from first-hand testimony from Europeans who claimed to have witnessed Egyptians to more scientific means such as his melanin dosage test.
Since you claim familiarity with Diop, it’s a wonder why you’ve only focused on his comparisons of imagery and linguistics.
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@villagewriter
“Several people who I know that are in America studying have had to encounter the “you sold us” statement from some African Americans. Who told them that Africans sold them? The same Europeans who profited from slavery and colonialism. Isn’t it a clever way of making people feel even worse about themselves when you tell them that their own race sold them; pretty clever. They even hardly have to use that excuse often when there are numerous tablimensahs out there to spread it.”—-I agree and I see it as a skewed view of what actually may have happened and what makes sense to me. I believe and agree that Africans did sell between each other, but I find it odd they would trade with strangers they knew little or nothing about.
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@Sharinlr
I do not know whether you will see this comment; I can sense Abagond is about to shut down commenting on this article-he has banned two of my comments already lol. But I will say this anyway. We need to look at the bigger picture when we talk about transatlantic slave trade. It was political, racist, brutal and was controlled by white people. The legacy of that slave trade is still present to this day. Whites still profit from it and black people all over the world still suffer from its consequences. Its not about which place the slavery was committed or who sold who but who is still benefiting from it. I never entertain people who present me with tablimensah type arguments of Africans sold Africans.
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@villagewriter
I never said West or West Central Africans initiated the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. I’ve already said Europeans established the plantations and colonies across the Atlantic, Europeans and Euro-Americans were the ones who purchased slaves on the coast and forced them into the horrors of the Middle Passage. You don’t seem to understand that, do you?
You keep imposing modern notions of race on people who didn’t see themselves as such. Slave trading existed in different parts of Africa before the Portuguese showed up on the 1400s, and Europeans tapped into and helped expand the scale of slave trading with their demand for labor. There was surely some violence, like the Portuguese in parts of Angola, but Europeans were too weak to conquer in the interior or organize slave raids. It wasn’t until the late 1800s when nearly every part of Africa was under the control of European powers.
You claim the Europeans played African powers against each other in some sort of divide and conquer strategy. These societies didn’t see each other as African or black, so they didn’t need to be ‘divided.’
You should check out the list of scholars I gave you above. You’ll find that trying to impose 20th and 21st century notions of race or identities is more complicated. Not all of them are ‘European’ or ‘white,’ if that matters so much to you.
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@tablimensah
You can actually play two enemies against each other. They did it in Rwanda and in Kenya. Is that a concept too hard to process. What is so hard to understand from that? Have you erected a Eurocentric wall in your head that refuses to get that. I have read most of what those authors had to say and this is my conclusion; I am skeptical about what any European scholar has to say about slavery in the Sahara.
Who is imposing modern notions about race? You are the guy trying to make Europeans look like spectators in all this yet they were the protagonists in transatlantic slave trade.They were white tablimensah; they were white and they remain white because the legacy of slavery still exists. Seriously, do you live in a bubble of some kind. Whiteness is political and as long as white political machinations still oppress black people while at the same time gaining from slavery the protagonists will remain white. Black people still suffer from the effects of slavery and your obsession with trying to make slavery in Africa some kind of motivation for transatlantic trade shows how your mind is colonized. Europeans practice nepotism because they see each other as one and that’s what we need as black people to balance their nepotism. Do you belong to the camp of “not all slave owners were cruel camp”?
More Africans are waking up and looking deep and analyzing the European narratives that they imposed on us, and people like you will loose in the process; believe me.
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The Europeans were actually the antagonistic villains. They were the Thanos of slavery.
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“You can actually play two enemies against each other. They did it in Rwanda and in Kenya. Is that a concept too hard to process. What is so hard to understand from that? Have you erected a Eurocentric wall in your head that refuses to get that. I have read most of what those authors had to say and this is my conclusion; I am skeptical about what any European scholar has to say about slavery in the Sahara.”
Again, you’re thinking about history in terms of 21st century identity politics and notions of race. The example of Rwanda or Burundi happened under colonialism in the 20th century, not the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
“Who is imposing modern notions about race? You are the guy trying to make Europeans look like spectators in all this yet they were the protagonists in transatlantic slave trade.They were white tablimensah; they were white and they remain white because the legacy of slavery still exists. Seriously, do you live in a bubble of some kind. Whiteness is political and as long as white political machinations still oppress black people while at the same time gaining from slavery the protagonists will remain white. Black people still suffer from the effects of slavery and your obsession with trying to make slavery in Africa some kind of motivation for transatlantic trade shows how your mind is colonized. Europeans practice nepotism because they see each other as one and that’s what we need as black people to balance their nepotism. Do you belong to the camp of “not all slave owners were cruel camp”?
No, it’s you who assumes all these different ethnic groups in West and West Central Africa saw themselves as ‘African’ or ‘black’ during the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. I never said Europeans were spectators, either. You didn’t read my words. I indicated that they were present on the coasts, engaged in trade with local societies, ran the Middle Passage, and practiced plantation slavery in the Americas. How am I turning Europeans into spectators?
Did I ever deny that Black people still suffer from the effects of slavery? Did I ever say that Africans started the trans-Atlantic trade? No, all I said was slave trading existed and some societies participated in it with some Europeans, and when demand rose in the Americas, some met that demand. This has nothing to do with ‘colonized minds’ or the “not all slave owners were cruel camp.”
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Where did I say that Africans saw each other as black; I am sure they were aware they had dark skin especially when the vampires came to shore. Is there a comment I made in my sleep where I claimed Africans saw each other as African or black? Haven’t I said several times that different nations in Africa did fight each other and were enemies too. Do you want me to emphasize it to make your precious white people look less greyer or look more like innocent traders? (I am not saying that white people are inherently evil; just the slave traders)
Slavery in Africa existed mainly in places that had contact with Arabs and Islam. The black slave traders were collaborators and collaborators exist even now.There was no slavery in most of Africa south of the Sahara. There is a reason why north Africa is mostly mixed to the point where the Africans there think they are not black.
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I have heard of Dr Rodney’s reputation and his book has been on my list for a while.
Here is short excerpt.
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Walter Rodney 1973:
“Africans were taken by Arabs and were sold to Arab buyers. This is known (in European books) as the ‘Arab Slave Trade’.’ Therefore, let it be clear that when Europeans shipped Africans to European buyers it was the ‘European Slave trade’ from Africa.
…… European buyers purchased African captives on the coasts of Africa and the transaction between themselves and Africans was a form of trade. It is also true that very often a captive was sold and resold as he made his way from the interior to the port of embarkation — and that too was form of trade. However, on the whole, the process by which captives were obtained on African soil was not trade at all. It was through warfare, trickery, banditry and kidnapping. When one tries to measure the effect of European slave trading on the African continent, it is very essential to realise that one is measuring the effect of social violence rather than trade in any normal sense of the word.”
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“Again, you’re thinking about history in terms of 21st century identity politics and notions of race. The example of Rwanda or Burundi happened under colonialism in the 20th century, not the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. ”
Yes, I know tablimensah. I am an African who happens to know a lot about African history. I used that example to show you that two enemies can also be played against each other. It is a trick that has been used for thousands of years so stop pretending you are not aware of that.
Notions of race existed even in the times of Herodotus but then they were not used to take advantage of other people. It is possible that the Arabs also had those notions. They may not have created the one drop rule nonsense, or the colored nonsense but they existed in some form. They may not have included IQ tests but they existed.
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The” authentic study” or unbias of Africa by Eurocentrists is often embedded with the linguistic mastery of ellipsis, downplay and sophisticated language. In the case above large tracts have been given to show ‘African agency’ in their slave trading and completely collapsing the role of the technologically more powerful Europeans.
Slavery is indeed the business of human societies. Some of those people engaging in slavery identified as Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Akan, Nigerian, British, Portuguese, Spanish, Indian, Fon, Kongo and Chinese. Some millennia ago, and some still in the 21st century in the USA.
The European controlled slave trade was not some private venture divorced from state and church. That state and church was a representation of “the people.” It represented the wealth and security of Western nations. So the vast majority of Western Europeans and their descendants global profited from slavery—a privilege people of European ancestry still enjoy at the expense of African development.” quote sores It is simply disingenuous and dishonest to compare the capitalistic motives and ambitions of the European with the many ethnic groups which were forced to sell their neighbours (or even their own children) into slavery for fear of the entire family being sold.
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“Where did I say that Africans saw each other as black; I am sure they were aware they had dark skin especially when the vampires came to shore. Is there a comment I made in my sleep where I claimed Africans saw each other as African or black? Haven’t I said several times that different nations in Africa did fight each other and were enemies too. Do you want me to emphasize it to make your precious white people look less greyer or look more like innocent traders? (I am not saying that white people are inherently evil; just the slave traders)”
You’re the one imposing race on them, talking about ‘divide and conquer’ when the various societies of West and Central Africa were not ‘united’ to begin with. I am not interested in ‘precious white people’ or absolving them of ‘guilt’ in the slave trade.
“Slavery in Africa existed mainly in places that had contact with Arabs and Islam. The black slave traders were collaborators and collaborators exist even now.There was no slavery in most of Africa south of the Sahara. There is a reason why north Africa is mostly mixed to the point where the Africans there think they are not black.”
False, slavery existed in many different parts of the African continent in a variety of forms, not just trans-Saharan trade or the Swahili coast. Did you know the Portuguese even sold slaves from other parts of the West Africa to societies in what is now Ghana in the 1500s? There was a market for slave trading in multiple parts of the continent.
I suggest you read some books on published on African History and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. I have John K. Thornton’s Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 in front of me right now. Here’s what he has to say about the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and slavery in Africa on page 125:
“The willingness of Africa’s commercial and political elite to supply slaves should be sought in their own internal dynamics and history. Institutional factors predisposed African societies to hold slaves, and the development of Africa’s domestic economy encouraged large-scale trading and possession of slaves long before Europeans visited African shores. The increase in warfare and political instability in some regions may well have contributed to the growth of the slave trade from those regions, but one cannot easily assign the demand for slaves as the cause of the instability, especially as our knowledge of African politics provides many more internal causes. Given the commercial interests of African states and the existing slave market in private hands in Africa, it is not surprising that Africans were able to respond to European demands for slaves, as long as the prices attracted them.”
Earlier in the text, he provides an overview of slavery in different forms in West and West Central Africa before the development of the trans-Atlantic trade. He is not ‘blaming’ Africans for the Middle Passage or slavery in the Americas, just explaining how and why a trade could develop seemingly out of nothing.
Calling the ‘black slave traders’ collaborators is not a useful paradigm. What are you trying to say, that they ‘collaborated’ or ‘betrayed’ other Africans? They didn’t see each other as ‘African’ so merchants or elite who traded with Europeans were not ‘defecting’ or ‘aiding the enemy.’ The ‘enemy’ to various African societies was not ‘Europeans’ or ‘whites.’
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“Today there is an overemphasis on the word ‘slavery’ where slavery means the involuntary removal of an individual’s freedom. But the restriction of degrees of freedom is an ongoing aspect of human societies; where if members of a given society commit undesirable acts (not paying tax, adultery, treason, terrorism, etc.) then systems were designed to curb the freedom of these individuals. So today America calls it the Criminal Justice System, history calls it Slavery. And in America’s system Africans are again targeted and taken out of the voting process and the competitive job process. So while this is not chattel slavery it is akin to the broader social slavery seen in history”. Alik Shahadah
‘The line that defines what is and isn’t slavery is blurred and when ethnic groups and nationalities
fought in wars the vanquished where given into a system of subservience to the victors: askew rules of war. However, let not the word “slavery” allow an analogue to what happened on the plantations of Jamaica, Brazil and America.’ ‘Alik Shahadah
There is a gargantuan difference between slavery in Africa and chattel slavery practiced in America. It is very telling that over millennia, that the English language has failed to coin new words for the never-in-the-history-of-humanity-the -most brutal-sadistic-vile torture/slavery. Instead, we have the euphemistic paltry word: chattel.
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Whilst Africans and Europeans were jointly involved in the European slave trade it was Europe that dominated the connection, vastly enlarged the slave trade, and continually turned it to European advantage and to an African disadvantage.
Basil Davidson states: “within both European and African institutions there were also differences, and these differences, however “minor,” created a decisive outcome, which allowed European total domination evolving into colonialism and today’s neo-colonialism. And with neo-colonialism came the proxy puppet African elites who are direct ideological descendant of the African slave trading elite”.
The African involvement without a doubt is shameful. Indeed, it has been pointed out in detail, that there was African trading and the enslavement of fellow Africans. It was not fair trade and hardly a partnership as being asserted as fact and historical ‘authenticity’ between two trading partners beyond the initial capture and sale. Europeans have this tradition of underplaying their role in direct capture in their slave trade in many areas. Also including in that is the numbers of the enslaved and the extent of their cruelty. Horrific trauma was experienced of the slaving stations, for example, Goree. (If you find the film, Sankofa, by Haile Gerima. It as independently funded African film skilfully depicting the horrors of the African Holocaust.)
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Now the act of taking Africans from their home by force and violence is a crime, and in that crime a minority of Africans played a major role. That was stage ONE in The AFRICAN HOLOCAUST.
2. And without the assistance of any Africans we then come to storing Africans in dungeons and subjecting them to all manner of unspeakable horrors, including rape, in places like Goree or El Mina. On board the ships, Africans were fed alive, as a form of terrorism, to man-eating sharks. All of this constitutes yet another set of human rights violations. Loading and packaging human beings on a ship like sardines and subjecting them to living and breathing in their own urine and excrement is another set of crimes against humanity (again a crime exclusive to Europe in the Atlantic system)
3. Taking them and selling them off like chattel is yet another crime
4. Dehumanizing them and enslaving them on the plantation is yet another set of crimes against humanity.
5. To disrupt the culture, names, language and religion of those captive people is yet another crime against humanity.
6. To exploit to build the empires of the West for over 300 years; torture, persecute dehumanize them is yet another crime.
7. To finally release them from their Holocaust to be subjects and victims of all forms of racism up until the 60’s is yet another crime.
8. And finally to continue to enjoy the fruits of that legacy, deny and oppress them into the contemporary moment is yet another crime against humanity
As I am writing this I cannot ever recall any Africans demanding an apology and reparations from the Americas and Europe for their role in the crimes against Africa. Nor, to my mind even a half-baked apology. I have not heard anything discussions regarding this.
It makes utter sense that African Americans should demand reparations, but what about African reparations for it’s under development?
Economically the growth that should have been experienced in Africa, from African human resources, was experienced in the West – as opposed to in Africa.
Source: African Holocaust.
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@Taotesan
I really laugh when some white scholar starts talking about African History because I know most of them base their arguments on other notions created by racist historians in the past. People seem to forget that African nations got independence just recently; some even as late as the 80s. The 80s was also the period where America had a racist president who made economic decisions that impoverished African Americans and Africans. Charles Murray was still churning out his nonsense about IQ in The Bell Curve in the 80s and African Americans were being moved into ghettos. People were still arguing about whether South Africa was a white country or a black country. So, the white scholars who were alive then and studied under other white scholars wrote African history they way they saw it.
It is only in the late 90s that most scholars started taking people like Ali Mazrui seriously. We are yet to purge the European narrative completely out of our history.
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“I really laugh when some white scholar starts talking about African History because I know most of them base their arguments on other notions created by racist historians in the past. ”
That’s a vast generalization. How do you know John K. Thornton bases his research on racist historians? Certainly, he has read the historiography, which includes work by racist or colonialist historians, but that doesn’t mean his conclusions are the same. Most of his research is on the Kingdom of Kongo and West Central Africa, and he’s familiarized himself with the vast primary source documents, written by literate Kongolese elites, and Europeans. He’s probably one of the most prominent Africanists who specializes on Kongo in the US. Can you tell me why you think he might be racist, Eurocentric, or trying to impose a ‘European narrative’?
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@tablimensah
Prominent Africanist! Did he come to the Congo and the Congolese gave him that title? I am more curious about the Congolese elites he based his work on. I did not call the Thornton guy racist; I don’t know the guy personally. Have I called him a racist in any of my comments? Or did your mind add his name on my comments like auto-correct? I said most white historians not Thornton.
I will not take him seriously until I study Congolese writings about their own history and compare their work with his. I have already made my position on slavery in Africa quite clear. Okay.
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@villagewriter
Kongo, not to be mistaken with the modern nations of Congo or Republic of Congo. I am sorry if I misunderstood you, but you didn’t respond directly to Thornton’s quote and made a vast generalization instead about ‘white historians.’
“I will not take him seriously until I study Congolese writings about their own history and compare their work with his. I have already made my position on slavery in Africa quite clear. Okay.”
And your position on slavery in Africa is distorted. At this stage, Thornton is far more credible. There are Bakongo scholars, unfortunately, some of their academic research is not widely available in English.
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@talibmensah
I wish not to go deep into this, but when you are raised in a certain environment with certain influences it does not matter how learned or study you become as you will always insert that view into your work.
On this blog I have seen people learn history and still managed to stamp it with a eurocentric view and not even be aware of it. As such anytime a individual who has not lived the works they are trying to speak on, yet only involvement is through study and listening to others is subject to that.
John K. Thornton growing up with a European mindset can very likely impose that. You can’t ell that he has anymore than another can tell if he hasn’t. Considering that it is fair to question it.
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Thornton is American, of European descent. And yes, European or North American academics who study Africa and aren’t from the continent have a problem of cultural and language divides. But does that mean scholars can’t write about other parts of the world with respect and nuance? In ways that challenge previously long-held Eurocentric biases?
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“False, slavery existed in many different parts of the African continent in a variety of forms, not just trans-Saharan trade or the Swahili coast. Did you know the Portuguese even sold slaves from other parts of the West Africa to societies in what is now Ghana in the 1500s? There was a market for slave trading in multiple parts of the continent. ”
Where were these slave markets? You say there were multiple places that practiced slavery-where exactly? Which tribes were involved? What did they use the slaves for? I knew that was the idea you wanted to propagate that’s why I have been resisting your comments and surprise,surprise you base those assertions on claims made by a white man. God, you are naive and Eurocentric to an embarrassing extreme. Your assertion that slavery was rampant before the coming of Arabs and Islam in Africa is a fat lie.
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@talibmensah
I did not say they couldn’t, but I do realize that regardless they are subject to imposing eurocentric views on their work whether they realize it or not. Quite often they do not realize it. These works become published and this distortion becomes “the truth”.
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@villagewriter
“Your assertion that slavery was rampant before the coming of Arabs and Islam in Africa is a fat lie.”
Read Thornton’s book. Read books on African history. Check the aforementioned written list of scholars who have written about slavery and the slave trade. “Tribe” is a problematic word I wouldn’t use, either. If reading books makes me naive and Eurocentric to you, how else could I learn about African history here in the US?
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@tablimensah
Until the people in that part of the world write that they were indeed involved in slavery before the coming of Europeans, I will not believe Thornton and all his white counterparts. Most books written by African scholars have been translated into English; show me one where the writer agrees with Thornton and I may take it seriously. Arabs loved slavery and used slaves as servants in their houses and spice farms in East African coast. I wonder what Thornton black slavers used their slaves for in communities that mostly practiced small scale agriculture and livestock keeping.
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@ villagewriter:
Without sounding too radical and being too extreme, I simply cannot understand ‘well-meaning Euro centric writers who want to augment a bloated propaganda machine by multiplying their overrepresented numbers on the African story. For all their interest and ‘sincerity’, why do they not allow Africans to breathe and write their own history? Why the need to talk over Africans and African Americans about their own history? Why not practice magnanimity and some insight, and set themselves aside? For my own part, whether the facts on face value seem to be correct, (since I am not a historian) one has to climb hurdles to challenge them on their subconscious biases. Why not use the same passion to re-lens their own history?
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@Tablimensah
I suspect you do not read history books written by African scholars; please read them-your naivety will float away quickly. African history is part of our curriculum here and we studied it from grade school to college; so you can argue with me all day and I will still stand my ground. Your sources are mostly white scholars, whom I don’t trust.
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@villagewriter
He explains it in his book. There were different notions of wealth and power in parts of West and West Central Africa. The concept of wealth in people vs. wealth in land is important here. Many African elites or ‘big men’ in Central and West Africa based their power on how many dependents they could attract or acquire. So, some societies practiced forms of slavery in which dependents were taken and used for agricultural labor. According to Thornton and others, the Songhay empire used slaves for a variety of things, such as cultivation on royal estates or even in government administration and military purposes. Slaves were also used for producing export good and as additional dependents for agriculture. Slaves were also sold to other societies in exchange for goods, like horses, textiles, guns, manufactured products, gold, salt, etc. Some African elites engaged in the slave trade to acquire goods that were then redistributed to dependents and allies.
Again, do some research at a library. You can find several books about slavery and the slave trade nowadays. One new book that you might find interesting was written by a Brazilian scholar on Benguela, a slave port in Angola. Her book shows how the small Portuguese population sometimes participated in the capture of slaves as well as engaging in trade along the Coast.
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@Tablimensah
You said slavery was “common” in Africa. I have done the research. I have always been fascinated by African history and I knew about the slave trade in Songhai empire and in Mali. But the trade was not common and it was only practiced by some elites who had developed an appetite for shiny trinkets and other things given to them by Europeans and Arabs. They did not enslave their own people of their nation but enemies they had captured in war. But these slaves always had the opportunity to be free.
Islam was present in Songhai empire and it had a presence in central Africa. So,yes I am not surprised that they practiced slavery; it makes sense. Your attempt at propagating Eurocentric lies; trying to make slavery part and parcel of cultures of different African people is just disgusting. It was something that some rulers in Africa adopted when demand for slaves in the Middle East and in places occupied by the Omani Arabs in East Africa. I t was an idea that gradually took hold in these communities as they engaged with foreigners from outside the continent. So, yes, I disagree with Thornton and his Eurocentric view of African history.
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Slavery and slave trading existed all over the world, including in non-Islamic areas of Africa. I am not trying to suggest it was on the same scale as what transpired in the Americas, there are distinctions. And yes, I know they enslaved or sold people from other ethnic groups, that’s the point. Africans didn’t perceive each other as ‘Africans’ or blacks, so they weren’t ‘collaborators’ or ‘defectors’ by trading with Europeans.
“Your attempt at propagating Eurocentric lies; trying to make slavery part and parcel of cultures of different African people is just disgusting. It was something that some rulers in Africa adopted when demand for slaves in the Middle East and in places occupied by the Omani Arabs in East Africa. I t was an idea that gradually took hold in these communities as they engaged with foreigners from outside the continent. So, yes, I disagree with Thornton and his Eurocentric view of African history.”
I am unaware of any “Eurocentric lies” here. Slavery existed in various forms throughout the continent. And it wasn’t just Muslims. You should actually read what Thornton and others wrote. Just because you want to believe something about African history doesn’t make it factual.
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Collaborators are people who converted to Islam and sold their own people to slavery-get it. I have looked at Thornton’s ideas- what makes you think I have not. He first comes off as someone criticizing European impressions on African history but read between the lines and you realize he helps promote them. I don’t want to believe something, African scholars actually wrote about slavery and in all the books I had read I never came across that ludicrous idea that slavery existed in most African cultures. I am sorry, but you and Thornton better go and sell that concept to whites but do not try spreading that nonsense to Africans. You are trying to spread a lie to an African about his own history; are you serious? No, you go and read books written by Africans about their own history. Thornton’s ideas are not factual they are guesses made an American white man who has his own biases about African history. Sell your snake oil somewhere else.
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@villagewriter
You know, it’s not just Thornton and ‘whites’ who have made similar arguments. African and African Diasporic scholars have reached similar conclusions. I’d like for you to recommend me African scholars who have differed greatly in their interpretation than Thornton. Are African and African-descended who historians agree with Thornton, are they somehow ‘collaborators’ too?
“Collaborators are people who converted to Islam and sold their own people to slavery-get it.”
This is misleading. Only Muslims sold slaves? You might want to read some history books…
I thought we already agreed they weren’t selling their own people into slavery because they didn’t conceive of themselves as a ‘race’ or ‘single people’?
I am not sure how they are collaborators then, because they weren’t ‘betraying their own people’ or ‘defectors.’ Your ‘collaborator paradigm’ is not very appropriate.
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Owen ‘Alik Shahadah is a progressive African scholar :
“On the other side, almost every single European-run historical discourse, led by the likes of John Thornton, attempts to reduce the impact, severity and legacy of the African Holocaust. Normalization white-washes slavery into “everyone did it; it is part of world history.” “Africans sold Africans to Europeans so they are just as guilty.” “Without African involvement they could be no slave trade (Thornton).”
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@taotesan
Did I ever say Africans were “just as guilty”? That’s the kind of nonsense I’ve read from Henry Louis Gates to argue against reparations. And in my readings of Thornton, I have never read him trying to diminish the impact, severity, and legacy of the ‘African Holocaust.’ Thornton doesn’t talk about ‘guilt’ because he’s interested in trying to unravel the motives and dynamics of societies and polities in West and West Central Africa.
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@talibmensah
Do not put words in my mouth. I merely pointing out the closest AFRICAN source, whom I shall put more store than a Eurocentrist historian. You are the one extolling the virtues of Thornton. I will not read any white historical source on the African Holocaust as large parts of my life has already been wasted by having had white historians and their distorted version of history rammed my throat.
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Okay, I’m sorry that you have read some garbage by white historians. Does that mean you will only read works about Africa by Africans, that you will never trust something written by a ‘white’ person because they are ‘white’? It’s good to retain some skepticism when reading anything about history, but I have lots of nonsense about African history by ‘black’ writers, too.
I didn’t mean to ‘put words in your mouth.’ The quote you gave was a direct critique of Thornton. What are Shahadah’s qualifications? Does he participate in colloquiums, exchanges with historians of Africa and the slave trade? Has he published any books? His website doesn’t indicate much. And why do you call him African? He’s not from an African country.
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talibmensah@Linda
Look, Linda, my point was made numerous times. If you go back far enough into prehistoric times, you can find all sorts of links between different regions of Africa. But that’s just the problem: you’d have to go back thousands of years before the rise of dynastic Egypt or the earliest known cities or states in West Africa.
Linda says,
No you haven’t made your Point… you’ve made lots of assumptions that you haven’t backed up — that’s why I asked you for real details.
I feel like you are trying to Lecture and present the information as “Fact” — when in reality, your statements are vague and generalized.
I find that troubling.. that’s why I had a problem with what you said, in the post about Songhay Empire, when GroJo called you out:
your response:
Linda says,
Grojo did not challenge your last statement but I am because
where is the proof and the details to back up your statements about pre-dynastic Egypt’s evolution.
To me, what you wrote doesn’t cut it — it’s Vague — nor does your typical response of “hey, go read this book”
back your sh’t up with actual sentences, quotations, citations, and articles that people can see and read on this blog — something
(and by the way, the Moors were a group composed of Arabs and Africans – Tauregs, Fulanis, and other African Muslims, who went on the Jihads into Europe — so why shouldn’t African Americans be excited to know and learn about them — Muslims were taken as slaves and brought to the Americas too)
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@ talibmensah: I had been indoctrinated from a very young age that MY and MY PEOPLES history began in 1652. I am getting long in the tooth and the little time I have on this planet, I would rather pay more mind to African and other voices, whether they be History, Literature, music as an act of self love and celebration and as an audience to those writers and artists. My psyche has been BRUTALIZED by white supremacy. It is an act of self love and self- preservation as I have come the long way round to find ALMOST always lies are written against Africans. It would be my own responsibility to weigh the arguments or historical facts amongst African historians. In South Africa, still, their is a dearth of African scholars whose works are not published or sold in book stores
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Talibmensah @ Ancient Egypt certainly seems to have much stronger ties with northern Sudan and evolved along the Nile in a specific region of the African continent.
I’ve never heard of anyone trying to connect Igbo to ancient Egyptian. I’ll have to look into that later, but seems unlikely given that both languages are generally accepted as belonging to different language families.
Linda says,
LOL…talibmensah, come on now – this statement is very presumptuous of you.
I don’t need you to “look into” or tell me if the Professor Acholonu is “right or wrong” or tell me something is “unlikely” because it does not line up with the current African lingual system created by white Europeans.
Were the Africans active participants in “creating” the classification system that grouped African languages?
Because if my memory serves me well, Africans were not asked for their opinions—they were just told by the Europeans that their languages were going to be grouped into to a Family called “Bantu” – a term created by German scholar, Carl Meinhof
I do agree with you when you say black Diasporans shouldn’t solely focus on the African empires that white western Academia focuses on or have Appropriated as part of European history
but please don’t expect me to dismiss the research presented by actual native African scholars because it doesn’t fit with the historical or current white western Narrative.
I had also found it troubling that your book and article recommendations (to Blakksage) were 98% white American/European authors (you added a sprinkle of black American, African, and Arab authors)
Is it difficult for you to find modern day African scholars to source?
As I said previously, it’s important to dispel the myths and stereotypes that are prevalent about black people and Africans
because white western Academia has already whitewashed, and taken it upon themselves to “claim and dismiss” African history at will, as if they have the right to do so
____________________________
Anyhow, since you view White people as the official “Authoritarians”
On anything that is African, here is a white man who also proposed a link between Kemet/Coptic and indigenous “Bantu” languages:
Click to access 2332900b.pdf
“The distinguished Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner in his book on Ancient Egyptian Grammar makes the following important observation in relation to the Ancient Egyptian language:
This original independent work presented in my book is the culmination of many years of intensive study into the linguistic affinities, which exist between Ancient Egyptian and the Bantu languages of East/Central and Southern Africa. It presents the evidence which refers to Sir Alan Gardiner’s statement above, that until the relationship to African languages is realised, Ancient Egyptian must be classified as standing outside the Semitic group of languages.”
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wow, I see this board has been busy today– lots to catch up on!
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I have to admit, from what I’ve glimpsed,
I’m Amazed at the exchanges –people are actually trying to teach Africans – Villagewriter and Taotesan, about Africa
instead of asking them to share their First hand knowledge, as African natives.
Talibmensah, maybe you or someone else should recommend a book to Villagewriter and Taotesan, that can teach them both how to speak their mother languages –Arabic, Swahili, or Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi
—and about African or white colonial history and how it feels to be a black Africans who have lived under Apartheid or other types of Regimes. (they might not know, since they are Africans living in Africa)
and in turn, Villagewriter and Taotesan, you should follow Talibmensah’s lead, and recommend books about black American history, American governmental policies, the invention of Motown/Hip Hop, and about Hollywood.
you know, teach Talibmensah how it feels to be a black (or white) man living in America, even though he lives in America (since he thinks he needs to teach you about Africa, you can return the favour)
because as I understand it, it’ more “Real and True” when it comes from peer reviewed Academics than the actual Lived experience of real people
(sarcasm off now)
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Interesting how this thread and related ones on African history follow the Five Rules of Racial Standing, especially the first two rules:
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@ Linda
I too am amazed.
/sarcasm off
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http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/01/travel/day-and-a-night-luanda/
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@Linda
I’m not trying to teach Africans about Africa. I want to learn more about Africa, I I read books and the scholars are saying things that don’t align with what some Africans say. This seems to be the problem with village, there is an assumption on their part that scholars who are white or argue against their claims about slavery are pushing an agenda or European narrative. It’s nonsense, if Village and others read Thornton and other scholars, you’ll see whatnot the case.
Colonialism and apartheid are not what village and I were arguing about, but the nature of the trans-Atlantic trade. That’s upbringing up apartheid or recent colonialism was irrelevant to the discussion on the nature of the slave trade.
Also, why do you assume that just because someone is from Africa they’re knowledgeable about the history of the slave trade or the entire continent?? Very presumptuous and doesn’t make much sense.
Again, the Igbo theory is very unlikely, but let’s see what linguists say have you read Ehret, like I suggested? Abagond, that other post is also irrelevant.
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Yes, Linda, Africans can offer readings and recommendations for African American history and I would love to see and hear what Villagewriter or others have to say. The difference in perspectives is important. It’s why I like writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Teju Cole and other Africans or Caribbeans who have studied African-American history.
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Why is apartheid irrelevant? He is trying to tell you what they had in South Africa was history written by racist whites- I am very suspicious that you don’t get that. You live in a bubble where white people know our history better than we do. In my country alone there are 43 nations that are connected to other nations in the north and in central and west Africa. Non of them has the word slave in their vocabulary and non of them has traditions that could point to slavery. The only people with slavery in their vocabulary are the Arabs and the Somalis who were adherents of Islam. I have had several oral narratives from these nations and non point to anything connected to slavery. Chimamanda (comes to Kenya quite often) is just as concerned about European narratives about Africa like I am. We have stories from writers like Ngugi, Chinua Achebe, Binyavanga and Chima herself of white professors who told them their books were not African enough because they talked about falling in love and other things normal human beings go through. I mean how arrogant can you get. Thornton’s ideas about slavery in Africa could be based on his own definition of slavery, his lack of understanding of the culture and language of most people in Africa and his European need to get recognized for something he does not understand.
We in Africa are just beginning to question the likes of him. That is why Europeans who come to Africa nowadays have to ask permission to take pictures because we don’t know what they are going to do with those pictures. I am going to show my friends Thornton’s work; its time we had a good laugh as a group.
If anyone was still wondering why I am averse to this type of nonsense read this article, which is a direct result of Thornton’s ideas. He even says that 90% of all slaves were captured by Africans and were only sold later to Europeans. Now I know why African Americans ask why we sold them to slavery; clever white people.
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Henry Louis Gates wrote that article by the way and I am not surprised because the guy knows nothing about History or even African history. He is quoting Thornton in it. He did come to Africa for documentary on ancient African kingdoms and he kept comparing them to Greece, Rome and so on. He was looking at Africans with a European perspective. The guy went to Brazil and was busy telling Brown Brazilians who identified as black that they were not black. He is a man who is more interested in his Irish ancestors than Africans. I want Thornton to come to a University in East Africa and present his ideas. Here is a response to his lazy attempt at understanding Africa:
http://www.asante.net/articles/44/afrocentricity/
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Henry Louis Gates went to Ireland and he stood among the Irish and told them he was actually descended from an Irish man. The looked at him with blank stares..lol..what did he expect?
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talibmensah @ Yes, Linda, Africans can offer readings and recommendations for African American history and I would love to see and hear what Villagewriter or others have to say. The difference in perspectives is important.
Linda says,
Talibmensah, I personally don’t think “the difference in perspective” from a foreigner, is more important than a Natives perspective when it comes to discussing historical truths.
It takes hearing from the Natives themselves, to make a more complete assessment and comparison analysis, about the information presented by a Foreigner’s view
dont’ get me wrong, I find hearing different perspectives “interesting” but the Native’s voice is the more important voice when it comes to trying to repair history
because the Native voice/people can fill in the gaps that were omitted by the foreign historian, writer, observer, or researcher
I’ve read American authors and other foreigners “take” on Jamaica — I found some of them to be patronizing and/or clueless (like James Michener, who really allowed his contempt of the “masses” to shine through) or just an interesting article about someone’s personal experience
I would never take a foreigner’s analysis of Jamaican history or people as more authentic or accurate than a Jamaican’s analysis of Jamaican history/people.
in each Culture/Ethnic group, there are things that only a Native knows — born, raised, and weaned on things passed down through the generations
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“Talibmensah,@ Again, the Igbo theory is very unlikely, but let’s see what linguists say have you read Ehret, like I suggested? Abagond, that other post is also irrelevant.”
Linda says,
Again, that’s your opinion and it’s irrelevant
You are not judge or jury on African history, nor are you qualified to critique information about African languages, especially since you are not African
nor do you speak any African languages.
unless you can present an African or white western researcher/ scholar who speaks Igbo or an African language
who can explain why Egyptian Kemetic/ Coptic is not related to Igbo or any other “Bantu” language,
then neither you or said scholar, can tell me what is “true or false”
so please, don’t recommend for me to “read” anything — bring me a source that backs up your opinion
or you are typing on this blog to practice typing with two hands.
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@village
Apartheid was in South Africa. You kept bringing up things outside the geographic and historical period of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. And no, I never said whites know African history better. You obsess over race to an absurd degree that you assume anything by whites is imposing an European perspective on Africa, even without reading their works. And it’s not just whites who have studied dynamics of the slave trade, either.
And I’ve distanced myself from Gates. Asante agrees with me that Gates is wrong to assign equal moral blame for the slave trade in the Americas. I’ve never tried to argue against reparations here or accuse Africans of selling my ancestors because they didn’t see themselves as such. The only thing I’ve said, and many scholars have written about this, is that Europeans rarely organized the slave trade in the interior, were largely limited to the coasts, and kingdoms or traders who dealt with the Europeans had their own motives, power over prices, and agency in what they did.
I disagree with Asante about the collaborators. That’s ahistorical: the “Africans” who sold other “Africans” did not perceive each other as such, so they didn’t betray or defect from a country, race, or continent. They didn’t see themselves as helping oppressors.
I never denied European demand and brutality in the Middle Passage or plantation slavery. Yet, you accused me of being part white, sanitizing Europe’s role, and caring precious white people, as if I’m somehow trying to make whites look good or less horrible. I’m more interested in Africa at the time than the whites, and Thornton, Heywood (who is African-American) and others were offering theories for how, why, and who were engaged in the slave trade.
Okay, so in your studies, you say local languages in your region of Africa did not use slavery or define it similarly? I am not as familiar with slavery in East Africa beyond the Swahili Coast, so I can’t argue with you about something Ivenever studied.
@Linda
That doesn’t mean every Jamaican knows about the particulars of certain eras or events in Jamaican history. A mix of perspectives is better to compare and contrast, people can be blinded by nationalism, or there are countries where books are expensive and education is limited. It’s a combination of factors, really.
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On language, Linda, you do realize linguistics is more than speaking a language, right? The Igbo language is recognized as part of the Niger-Congo family, and people don’t see it as related to ancient Egyptian. Who knows, it’s possible future scholarship will challenge the currently accepted language classification system, but I as of now, Niger-Congo languages are believed to have a different origin than Afro-Asiatic.
If there’s anything to the Igbo argument, it will take a long time for linguistics to assess and reassess, it’s part of the advances in scholarship.
Neither are you fit to judge works on African history or languages, going by your reasoning.
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@tablimensah
There 43 nations now 44 since we accepted the Makonde as citizens (ethnic groups in Kenya). Most migrated to East Africa from North, Central and West Africa. Non of them have any word in their languages that describe anything similar to slavery. Your “many” scholars seem to be Thornton and Heywood alone and you take their assertions as gospel truth
I bring up apartheid because I want you to understand that white people are usually biased when they talk about other cultures; so, Thornton is biased too.
The impression that you are trying to create is that most African cultures practiced slavery; then to prove your misguided assertions you point to ethnic groups that were geographically close to the coast and close to centers where Africans traded with Arabs.
Then you deny and deny that Arabs had anything to do with slavery because Africans according to you started it all. You also say Islam had nothing to do with it. Yet when you become muslim you are no longer a Bakongo or a Mijikenda you are a muslim and if people in you family are not muslims they are kafirs and you can enslave them-thats how you become a collaborator.
You have an agenda tablimensah. An agenda that most people who are related to white people have in their attempt to reconcile the two parts of them that are constantly in conflict. Thornton’s ideas have been criticized by African scholars and more are still going to criticize him.
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Talibmensah@Linda
That doesn’t mean every Jamaican knows about the particulars of certain eras or events in Jamaican history.
Linda,
Oh please, that’s a silly thing to say– every?? does “every” white American know “everything” about American history
obviously not –but they dam sure know folklore and other nuances about aspects of their culture that can’t be found on Google —
it takes a foreigner living with or immersing themselves in said culture to learn all the “non-published” information that Native born, cultural insiders are privy to.
and your answer is a feeble attempt to gloss over and ignore the main point of my earlier statement, which is that
you are beyond Arrogant and rude in trying to tell Africans about Africa.
Reading a book on Africa published by white western media, does not take precedence over Native perspectives.
The condescending righteousness of your statements to Villagewriter and Taotesan
is so beyond the pale and whitewashed, that it’s stronger than a bottle of Bleach.
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Theories by Thornton and Heywood are irrelevant to me. Your “slavery was an everyday activity in Africa before Arabs and Europeans came” is a fat lie. Already, most white people have accepted Thornton’s ideas just wait patiently for the repercussions-they will not be pretty. I wish Thornton came to one of our universities- we would make him sweat.
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Linda says,
which people.. white people and the white academics who continue to support a white European created classification system
blah, blah, blah– I asked you to site sources, and this is the drivel you write back to me
Oh please, utter bullsh’t
I’m not the person trying to judge African history or language –I’m defending it against pretenders like you, who want to see white European world views continue to rule Africa’s history/people by continuing to control the Narrative
so don’t try to flip the script to bring me into your narcissistic club–you are all by yourself
you have no real details to post to dispute any of the scholars I brought in who discuss Egyptian kemetic/coptic being related to Bantu language
you have no white scholars to bring out the closet or you would have already done so,
so you have just proven that you are all smoke and mirrors and no substance.
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Thornton and all other African History quack’s are not just innocent scholars going about their work innocently. His claim that 90% of the slaves were already slaves under other Africans is a dangerous theory that will not affect him or his family but will affect everyone who is black.
History has been used for political purposes for years now and I do not see why they would stop doing it now. Especially now when China and Asia and displacing European interests in Africa and African people are starting to demand western corporations pay more in taxes.
I believe that our only way of survival is through Pan-Africanism. Its either that or the west will use its scholars and influence to create the disaster in Africa that they have created in the Middle East.
Think carefully about a possible attack on Africa by American corporate interests. What story will they sell to African Americans to go along with it ” Africans sold you”. Then they will throw trinkets at you here and there and make some shoddy reforms here and there and before you know it, it will be blacks blowing the “lets attack them” trumpet louder than everyone else. They may even appoint a general with a black grandfather.
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When I talk about American history, I rely on American historians
because they have skin in the game…everyone is a Nationalist and will play up the positives of their country and downplay it’s negatives.
They are comprehensive in discussing the “hows and whys” of their greatness or other people’s downfalls, so they are great sources to pick through
to find out about the Irish genocides, I read Irish writers who were also a fountain of information concerning Irish immigration
because “surprise, surprise” — the British authors all downplayed the British governments role in oppressing the Irish.
so why in the world, would I overlook African authors and scholars who discuss the history of their own particular country or region,
in favor of a foreigner, who has no allegiance to the Natives narrative and truth–for me to assume they are unbiased is Naive
I try not to partake in double-standards — as an avid reader, I know that it’s my prerogative to try to balance opposing views
and that Social Science is not an “exact” discipline, it’s always changing… hence I try to have an open mind
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“villagewriter @ Henry Louis Gates wrote that article by the way and I am not surprised because the guy knows nothing about History or even African history. He is quoting Thornton in it. He did come to Africa for documentary on ancient African kingdoms and he kept comparing them to Greece, Rome and so on. He was looking at Africans with a European perspective.”
Linda says,
Villagewriter, it’s a difficult thing to try and navigate being an African descendant in the Americas.
Henry Louis Gates is a product of his environment but he, in his own way, he is enlightened and trying to help others reconcile the duality of their history in America.
There are a lot of chains that need to be broken… the Eurocentric mindset has been well indoctrinated into all of us African descendants in the Americas.
You might laugh, but there is irony in the liberation of a black man, who can say out loud that he is also ethnically “Irish”
because growing up, he was denied the right to embrace or express his identity–and not remembering “his place” could get him killed.
for 400 years, black people were told “who and what” they were by white American people. They were so scarred that it was better to be “part Indian”, than to admit to being part-white, because that most likely meant that one of your black female ancestors, was raped by a white man.
being able to self-identify is an important step in being “free”
the psychological baggage is heavy — People have to get to know who they are, in order to move forward
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@ Linda
I understand. I never knew much about American History until I got to college. I always wonder how you guys have survived all that bullshit from racists. I loved Gates show where he helps trace people’s ancestors using their DNA. I only disagree with his attempt in 2010 to place blame on Africans for the transatlantic slave trade. I also believe people should know where they came from whether it is Ireland or Angola.
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@ talibmensah wrote: “When we waste time pretending or claiming to be ‘Moors’ or ‘Israelites’ or ‘Egyptians,’ we forget the vast advances made into real African historical research.”
My understanding of this comment is that the writer was going a little sideways on some aspects of black american culture that cleave to an american grasp of some african ideal? ie 3 movements delineated here moorish as in ‘whole person’, israelite as in the church based movement, and the egyptian one im not even going there?
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@Linda
We have a similar problem here too. When an African condemns the whole of Africa for being corrupt, or when we look up to European culture for answers for problems in our society and even when we entertain hotel establishments built by Italians to discriminate against Africans in our own soil.
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@villagewriter
I have read almost everything that you have said in other places and wish I had the link to share. The issue is that Europeans write in the sense of comparing Africa to their systems. That to me is part of imposing a eurocentric view on Africa. In short I agree with you.
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@ Linda
LMAO.
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@Kartoffel
“But if these outside opinions do hold up to scrutiny they will enter the academic debate.”
What does that even mean? There are plenty of opinions that aren’t evidenced that are accepted by western acadaemia, and plenty of evidenced opinions that are not.
“You insinuated that academia could not be trusted to represent all evidence. ”
That’s all in your head. The only thing I “insinuated” was that the evidence used to support a historian’s claims should determine trustworthiness, not whether or not his works are published by a university or are “accepted” by western acadaemia.
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Recently when Obama came over, CNN claimed that Kenya was a Hotbed of Terror and that it is worse than Iraq and Afghanistan combined. When the “expert” was busy spewing his lies on CNN, I couldn’t help but wonder whether there was another country called Kenya out there that I wasn’t aware of. We hit back and we hit back hard and had a lot of fun doing it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kenya-obama-someone-tell-cnn_55b13a55e4b0a9b948540eab
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
In that marketplace of ideas, your precious corporations have grabbed the megaphone. By your own logic on other threads, that marketplace of ideas will therefore be filled with White racism and Islamophobia.
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“villagewriter @ Linda
I understand. I never knew much about American History until I got to college. I always wonder how you guys have survived all that bullshit from r’cists. I loved Gates show where he helps trace people’s ancestors using their DNA.”
Linda says,
I’m Jamaican – I learned US history when I moved to the USA, so I can’t hitch my wagon to the tragedies that black Americans faced
As a member of the “British Commonwealth”, Kenya and Jamaica probably share commonalities of having to deal with throwing off the Colonial mentality left behind by the British.
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Lord of Mirkwood,
reading your nonsense is more painful than sticking a pin in my eye
time hasn’t made you any smarter — so please continue to shut the f’ up and don’t speak to me
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@abagond
I was going to write a long post to respond to LOM, but you put it simple and perfectly. Personally I don’t think he has a full grasp on the discussion to begin with and has once again made a comment out of his a**.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
Everything you said is easy to refute in one simple sentence.
That is not even what was meant or talked about.
As such when you can grasp what the discussion actually was then you can look less like the idiot that tried failed and tried to fail again.
I am sure you are going to try to rebuttal by saying “I brought that in so you have to refute it” or some variation of that, but just because you decided to interject something irrelevant doesn’t mean people have to always refute it.
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@Linda
I am ROFL laughing at that clown. He wants his opinion to be refuted, while he acts like a child and tells you how you have to respond to him like a grown woman.
Reminds me of that other poor soul who got banned for such harassment.
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Sharina,
drying paint is more intellectually stimulating than reading LOM’s comments.
Abagond must be keeping him around because he is good for a laugh
I normally think it’s a shame to make fun of the mentally challenged and retarded — but in LOM case, I will make an exception
Abagond has a sick sense of humour by subjecting us to this retards nonsense
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@Lord of Mirkwood @ Linda
Henceforth I will delete all comments you address to each other or comments where you make personal remarks about each other.
You still comment on the other’s COMMENTS when quoted.
So, this sort of comment is okay:
Linda said, “blah blah blah”. This is illogical because…”
But not this:
Linda is a big baby / an idiot, etc
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Abagond, my problem is I have NO interest in addressing him
or having him address me or my comments that I make to other people
He jumps into a conversation that he knows nothing about and makes dumb comments that he wants me to “refute”
– refute what?? garbage belongs in the bin, I’m not supposed to answer it
if I’m not talking to him, then I feel he shouldn’t address me or talk about me.
I don’t understand why he feels the need to bring up my name
he has no self-respect.. I can’t even call him a dog because even a dog knows when it’s time to move on because he is not wanted.
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@ Linda
Stupidity is not a bannable offence. I can tell him not to address you directly or make personal remarks, and I did, but if you make a comment, anyone is allowed to comment on its contents.
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Abagond, Stupidity is not a bannable offence.
repeat offenders should at least get a warning
anyway, Thank you
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Chinua Achebe:
What I think Kartoffel would say:
What I think Talibmensah would say:
What I think Lord of Mirkwood would say:
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^ Hahaha!
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@ resw77
“The only thing I “insinuated” was that the evidence used to support a historian’s claims should determine trustworthiness, not whether or not his works are published by a university or are “accepted” by western acadaemia.”
Of course that’s how it should be. I think peer-reviewed academia is the best way we have to ensure that – even though it sometimes fails. I don’t think we will convince each other on that subject so I will leave it at that.
In general I don’t think the problem with Western historiography of Africa is some nefarious plot to up-hold white supremacy by withholing evidence, but rather that it will always be from a Western point of view, meaning they will use Western concepts to make sense of African history. And without an inside perspective that will always be unsatisfactory. So what we need is a vast expansion of national history departments cross the continent (some countries of course are doing that already, others not so much), that can sift through the source material and describe the history in terms appropriate to the respective society.
@ talibmesah
Could you describe some of the slavery/servitude systems that existed in Africa and had relevance for the superregional intra-African trade? The only thing I know is that within Africa (and also in Arabia) the demand for women was higher than for men (as opposed to the Europeans who mostly bought men).
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LMAO!!!
Linda says to leave her alone and this fool interprets that as her bullying him. If you did not believe he lived in a fantasy before then you most certainly should read these comments. smh
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@Kartoffel
“rather that it will always be from a Western point of view, meaning they will use Western concepts to make sense of African history.”—I agree and this is true, but if you were taught, raised, and embedded with white supremacy ideas, then it is also fair to say that such will come out in your work. Same as the western point of view. For Americans a lot of them do not even realize they are racist or even hold racist ideas, so speaking solely on them it is very likely that a slight bit of this will come into play.
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@Kartoffel
“Of course that’s how it should be.”
That was my point, which is a far cry from the one you initially argued.
“In general I don’t think the problem with Western historiography of Africa is some nefarious plot to up-hold white supremacy by withholing evidence”
Well in general, I think that’s naive. And it’s not only about “withholding” (which can’t easily be proven), but IGNORING existing evidence that refutes “accepted” opinions in western acadaemia, which can certainly be proven.
“rather that it will always be from a Western point of view, meaning they will use Western concepts to make sense of African history”
Historians can only tell things from their point of view. The problem with accepted African history in western acadaemia is not necessarily that it’s told from a western perspective, but that it’s told in a derogatory manner in which Africa’s history depends on Europeans and other outsiders without evidence.
And you will note that we can’t even have a single conversation about African history on this blog without someone diminishing African historical feats without any evidence, giving credit to Europeans without any evidence and casting doubt on non-western academics without evidence.
This seems like psychopathic behavior that I can only credit to white supremacist institutions like western acadaemia.
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“@ Kartoffel -In general I don’t think the problem with Western historiography of Africa is some nefarious plot to up-hold white supremacy by withholing evidence”
Resw77 @ Kartoffel
Well in general, I think that’s naive. And it’s not only about “withholding” (which can’t easily be proven), but IGNORING existing evidence that refutes “accepted” opinions in western acadaemia, which can certainly be proven.
resw77,
Thank you, thank you..
I don’t know why it’s so hard for our white European “peers” to understand that simple concept.
it’s not about a conspiracy — it’s about the 100s of years of ignoring, omitting, and marginalizing Africa and it’s history
and not viewing Africa from an African point-of-view
it’s just that simple
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@Abagond: That was funny and clever i see what you did there.
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@Abagond
Spot on!
@Linda
I think they understand it and Kartoffel is disingenuous. It’s necessary to perpetuate the false perception most people have about African history. They know white supremacy wasn’t eradicated overnight and that western acadaemia is not immune to it.
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Just got through reading the thread post about the evil popes and Eugene IV 1431 was instrumental in allowing Portugal to bring Africans back as slaves. “He called the Portugese raids on Africa a crusade.”
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@Abagond
Those are absolutely brilliant analogies.
And not to take from them, we could also use canned hunting, which is the practice of wealthy white hunters hunting lions in an enclosed space. The lions are bred in captivity and usually bottle- fed and petted.
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@ Linda. Really, thank you again for your radiant thinking and invaluable input. I used to read widely on different subjects. So much so, I have even attempted to read Mein Kamf (which is unreadable) and Ben E. Klaassen to gain insight into white thinking ,western philosophy and ‘the classics’. I do believe if one has a standpoint, one cannot see 360 degrees. As I understand things, setting one aside and not being the centre of things allows, one gains greater scope in seeing the bigger picture.
As regards to your ‘sarcastic’ experiment.
I would suggest reading “Their Eyes Were Watching God”. Listening to field songs and spirituals; devouring works James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and such. Visit the Shomburg Library in New York. Read Book of the Blues Poetry- Langston Hughes, Amiri Baracki Read Dr Maulena Karenga with an open mind. If you are African American I would say, IMMERSE yourself in African American culture. Some of the greatest writers and greatest music in the world ever is right on your doorstep. In essence, I would say read, Zora Neale Hurston, whilst listening to Robert Johnson and always have Malcolm X at your fingertips. Understand that the greatest export of the US is not Hollywood or Macdonalds, but JAZZ and BLUES. Blues musicians are historians, too.
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In 1455, Pope Nicolas V issued a series of papal bulls that granted Portugal the right to enslave Africans. Church leaders argued that slavery served as a natural deterrent and Christianizing influence to “barbarous” behavior among pagans. Using this logic, the Pope issued a mandate to the Portuguese king, Alfonso V, and instructed him:
. . . to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever …[and] to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit . . .
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Whilst doing my own research on West Africa, and the slave trade in the 1400’s I asked myself many questions and one is :what is not being told? What is their angle? My lenses had to be constantly re-adjusted. But on the whole two things I have identified in Eurocentrism (regarding the canned hunters’) and that is interference and self- exoneration and self-entitlement. I have the greatest respect for African and African in diaspora intellectuals who set themselves to unstinting standards. And being positively dangerous truth tellers As examples, Dr. Maulana Karenga, Dr Walter Rodney. In 1971, Karenga was falsely imprisoned on trumped up charges .Dr Walter Rodney was killed by a bomb . His death is called an assassination. The canned hunter does not like free lions. Does anyone know of any white academics being taken out?
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@Talibmensah
“ I am confused as to how over 500 years ago someone can refer to the Europeans as ‘vampires.’ The slave traders simply inserted themselves into the already establish African trading systems and markets in order for the Atlantic Slave Trade to grow. Toby Wilkinson has written about this in the case of West Africa.”
I think the introduction to the European world changed the dynamics and motivation for African enslavement. Treating the slave trade as nothing but business tends to downgrade its human costs and and its far-reaching consequences
Since the 19th century,the West had imbibed an attitude of utter disrespect for Africa, and this has carried over to the present. Many argue that this lack of respect owes to the transatlantic slave trade, when the idea of racism was consolidated in ways that were very much tied to slavery. Various arguments over the era of the slave trade continue to be repackaged today, often disguised in elegant language and theories to mask the ideologies:
In attempting to underplay its damages and spread the blame, two issues have always been debated. One is the existing indigenous slavery before, during, and after the transatlantic slave trade. The other is the role of Africans within it. Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, what we call indigenous slavery was also transformed by the transatlantic slave trade.
The external trade injected violence into the system and relationships of power were sharply defined, with a widening gap between those who managed the state and the poor producers. Definitions of social relationships increasingly responded to external pressures.
As to the nature of slavery before the fifteenth century, Walter Rodney has argued that it existed in ways that we define for the nineteenth century. The definition of indigenous slavery continues to pose problems, as some are inclined to regard it as a mild form of servitude. The practice of the indigenous of slavery compared is vastly contrasted and should never be understated.
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The real issue that is always ignored is clear: the domestic slavery did not instigate the external slave trade, nor did it establish the conditions for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Europeans travelled to Africa.
.As to the second issue of African complicity, one must make a distinction between people and states, between the poor and rich, strangers and citizens, the continent and the ethnic units. Slavery and the slave trade involved the massive use of violence, in wars and military expeditions, markets protected by the state, and the power to make criminals and punish them. The tiny political class associated with the state saw benefits in the trade: the acquisition of resources to build and consolidate the state; self- enrichment and aggrandizement.
This tiny political class collaborated with those who instigated and sustained the demands for slaves. When a greedy political class saw the opportunity to connect indigenous slavery with the external trade in slaves, the scale of brutality became boundless with wars—even those justified on the basis of state formation—converting innocent war victims into slaves.
Treating the slave trade as nothing but business tends to downgrade its human costs, its far-reaching consequences.
sources:
Toyin Omoyeni: Nigerian historian and professor of African Studies.
Dr. Walter Rodney “How Europe underdeveloped Africa”.
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@taotesan
“And being positively dangerous truth tellers As examples, Dr. Maulana Karenga, Dr Walter Rodney. In 1971, Karenga was falsely imprisoned on trumped up charges .Dr Walter Rodney was killed by a bomb . His death is called an assassination. The canned hunter does not like free lions. Does anyone know of any white academics being taken out?”
journalists, american and otherwise, frequently meet with untimely demises
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@v8driver
Oh! yes Of course , Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange come to mind
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“Reading Dr. Rodney in part, I have come away with the understanding that that Africa, though ‘undeveloped’, was underdeveloped and it was Europe , and the Americas that were developed from the HUMAN capital of enslaved AFRICANS. He argues that the slave trade had caused social disruption like increased brutality in capture and increased warfare. He argued tahtt the European slave trade had increased the slave trade and intensified the exploitation.
Whereas the much vaunted Thornton, in his ‘nuanced and unromantic’ and’ neutral’ analysis of the European’s almost non-involvement except as equal trading partners in the slave trade:
“Slavery was widespread in Africa and its growth and development were largely independent of the Atlantic trade, except as the Atlantic trade was the growth of this internal slavery.
The slave trade (and the Atlantic in general) should not be seen as an” impact” )brought in from the outside and functioning as some sort of autonomous factor in African history. Instead, it grew out of and was rationalized by African societies who participated in it…………………”
……. slavery was rooted in the deep-seated legal and institutional structures of African societies…..”
Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 page 74
By John Thornton
Sounds like denial, denial, denial. Perhaps I am mistaken, but here I see plainly see blame-shifting and downplay of the European Slave Trade at its genesis.
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correction: I plainly see
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@Taotesan
That is why I am not about to trust Thornton; now that Jewish involvement in the trade is increasingly being acknowledged. Watch out when they can no longer deny their involvement, they will shift blame to Africa. In south Africa you know how they have tried to attack Mandela and Archbishop Tutu using a myriad of so called “scholars”.
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@villagewriter.
Forests are being felled for all the books now written by white South Africans on Nelson Mandela. I could not find one book by a Black person in the bookstore! Not so long ago he was a called a terrorist. I want to SCREAM whenever I hear white people, whichever station they are, evoke Madiba’s name.
Not so long ago, a complaint was lodged to the Human Rights Commission against President Jacob Zuma by Afrikaner. He simply stated: ” All our problems began in 1652.” This was the year when the Dutch had arrived in the Cape. This in the light that a large majority of said people do not believe that apartheid was not a crime against humanity.
I had recently chatted to a guy at gym who is studying politics and philosophy at the university. I was simply shocked that he was not learning about Cesar, Fanon, Senghor and Malcolm X and Steve Biko. The publishing industry and academia are still overwhelming white so they control the narrative and content.
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My typing is atrocious-was a crime against.
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@taotesan
I watched a documentary about those Afrikaners: they have serious mental issues. I would never trust those guys. I know its not all of them but after Stellenbosch University racism incident and the way they are creating white only towns in your country; I just hope you guys are watching them closely. Do not allow them to turn an inch of South Africa into another apartheid creature.
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I agree with what taotesan is writing about.
“slavery was rooted in the deep-seated legal and institutional structures of African societies”
I think Thornton is conflating slavery with servitude. The prison system was something that the Romans expanded into a form of brutal punishment. The prison system is a characteristic of the State. In most of decentralized Africa their were no prisons thus no punishments that involved incarceration. Instead you had a system where individuals who stole or did things against property would be required to pay restitution and that is where servitude to a tribe/clan would come into play. White centric writers call this slavery but it is not.
The other thing that’s lacking within decentralized parts of Africa was the structural system in place to move large amounts of people captured for slavery. The claim that “Africans sold their own” doesn’t hold up within these anarchistic areas because clan leaders could be “dechifed” so to speak. If a clan leader began kidnapping and selling members within their tribe/clan they would have been disposed of immediately. It is States that have the “force” needed to go out and kidnap and imprison people.
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I think the discussion if the unfreedom in African societies is to be classified as slavery or servitude is completly pointless. Relevant I think is to point out where the differences of the various systems of unfreedom are. So what were the life chances and legal situation of serfs/slaves in Africa and are the differnces between African unfreedom systems so little that we can speak of African servitude at all?
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@Kartoffel
I don’t think it is pointless at all. Servants had rights under the law, where as, slaves did not. To lump them into one is problematic in that it sees it as the same and all functioning the same when it did not.
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That’s exactly what I mean. The question is what legal rights did the serf/slave actually have? There is a vast diffrence between an unfree person in 18th century Russia and one in Western Germany, but we call both serfs. There is also a giant difference between an American unfree person and an Egyptian Mamluk, yet we call both slaves.
Maybe the situation of an unfree person inf Africa is so different form both European serfs and American slaves that both terms would be inappropriate.
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@ taotesan
I have not read Thornton, but that bit you quoted is Western apologetics all the way.
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